Can hard work still take you in the wrong direction?
A family wants relatives to be able to stay overnight. The spare room is full of boxes, so they spend several weekends building shelves. They measure carefully, fit each shelf securely and sort everything into labelled containers. At last, the floor is clear.
Then they bring in the folding bed. With the bed open, there is almost no room to walk past it. The shelves occupy the space where a visitor would need to stand, put a bag or get dressed.
The family has done the storage work well. What they wanted was a room someone could stay in, and their successful solution has made that harder. Hard work can take you in the wrong direction when completing the chosen task becomes more important than the result it was meant to make possible.
A Spark from From Chaos to Order
Without foresight, you can work hard and have many successful failures; in simpler terms, you achieve something, but it's not the right end result you desire.
In “Foresight”, Innocent asks us to consider how today’s work will affect life afterwards. An achievement can be real and still leave you with a result you did not want. Correcting it then takes more work, including undoing some of what you were pleased to finish.
The shelves make this uncomfortable to admit. They are sturdy. The boxes are easy to find. Several weekends of effort have produced visible order, and everyone can point to an improvement. It would feel wasteful to remove any of it.
Yet making the storage even better will not solve the problem. More labels will not create space beside the bed. Before the family does another job, they need to return to the ordinary evening the room was supposed to allow: a visitor arriving, opening a bag, changing clothes and going to sleep.
Had they unfolded the bed before building, that evening would have been easier to imagine. They could have seen which space needed to stay free. Some boxes might have needed to leave the room altogether, even though keeping everything there seemed the simplest plan at the time.
This is a useful way to look ahead in your own work. Ask what someone must be able to do after you finish. If you are preparing a lesson, what should the learner be able to understand or attempt? Completing the slides will not tell you whether the explanation is clear enough for them to use.
You can find out while there is still time to change the work. Let someone try to follow the explanation before you prepare the rest of the lesson. Their questions may show you what needs more attention, just as opening the bed would have shown the family where to leave space.
You will still miss things. Looking ahead cannot supply every future circumstance, and a sound plan may need to change when something unexpected happens. But a mismatch you can now see is a reason to reconsider. The hours already spent explain why the decision hurts; they do not show that more of the same work will help.
For the family, correcting the room may mean taking down one set of shelves and finding another home for its contents. Some careful work will be lost. Before they decide what to rebuild, they leave the bed open and try moving around it. This time, the space a guest needs will help determine what stays.
Related lessons
AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
Keep a Spark close
Read Spreuke on Android and receive a new Spark each morning.
