“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”
- Norman Vincent Peale

Of all the school assemblies I attended in school, I can only remember one. The guest speaker for this particular assembly was an astronaut.

After his presentation, the astronaut began to answer questions from the audience. Someone asked, “If you only had ten minutes before your spacecraft was going to blow up, what would you do?”

His answer was almost instantaneous, “I would think about what I was going to do for nine minutes, and do it in one.”

That answer made quite an impression on me. At the time, the concept of sitting still and just thinking for nine minutes made no sense. As a young boy in junior high school the idea of not getting busy and doing something simply escaped me.

However, as time passes, the wisdom of his answer continues to impress me. Basically, this astronaut was saying thing as Norman Vincent Peale, “he would plan work, and then work his plan.”

For what its worth, if this rule applies to an astronaut in a life or death situation, it could probably apply to anything you or I are currently working on also.