A backup plan sounds like wisdom, but it can quietly work against you. The question worth asking is what yours really is: a way to improve your chances, or just a way out? “You don’t try your best when you have something to fall back on.”

Innocent saw it when someone asked what he’d do if he didn’t succeed — and called that a backup plan. A plan that only comes into effect after failure, he realised, is a way of half-expecting to fail. It hands you a reason to feel secure and not try hard, and it chips at both your confidence and the worth of what you’re doing.

A real backup plan does the opposite. It gives you more ways to reach the same goal, inside the same vision — more paths to succeed, not a soft place to land.