Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face. - Mike Tyson
Golf is known as a game of misses. What separates the best players isn’t necessarily their best shots. It’s the quality of their worst shots. When I hear Rory McIlroy hit a bad shot and shout “I’m so bad at golf” I look at my last round and wish that I had his bad shot. When you’re playing golf, though, often when picking a target you’ll look at what’s my ‘best miss’.
Imagine you’re standing behind a golf ball, needing to hit a shot. For this thought experiment, imagine you can actually strike a golf ball. There is a lake on the left and a couple of deep bunkers in front. The ‘best miss’ here is long and/or right. Obviously, the intention is still to hit the ball to the green. But knowing the best miss will help you select a better target. You might pick a club based on the distance to the back of green rather than the middle (doesn’t matter too much if you go long) and when you line up the shot you’re going to pick a spot somewhere on the right side. Take the bunkers out of play, take the water out of play, and hey you might still get the ball on the green. But if you don’t I’ll still be ok.
I don’t know about all of you, but often when facing a decision or planning my next few months of work, I think about the happy path. When I started playing golf again, I’d always aim for the the flag. Back when I was spending more time designing systems and writing code, rather than teaching people about those things, I’d design a system based on what the expected good state looks like. For anyone who has worked in software, or made plans, this is a terrible idea.
This idea of the best miss is useful for life. That’s not to say you don’t want or expect the happy path, not at all. That is still the goal, still the desired outcome. But spend time thinking about where you want to miss. If you’re designing a software system, your best miss is that your users still have a good experience even if everything behind the scenes is on fire. If you’re budgeting, your best miss is that you have a bit of space every month for if an unexpected expense comes up. If you’re writing up a strategy for your next 6 months of work, your best miss is to consider what happens if things don’t work out as expected and plan for it.
If, in life, you could strive to be like an elite golfer. Where your bad shot is still 10x better than the average Joe, over time you’ve got an excellent chance of reaching your goals. Whatever they may be.
James