I suffer from an overwhelming desire to plan things. After all, a failure to plan is a plan to fail, right?

Wrong.

All this planning inevitably leads to disappointment as nothing ever turns out the way I hope it will.

The weather is bad, I have a fight with someone, I get sick. Something goes wrong.

So should I plan for failure? Should I assume that at least part of my carefully conceived control freak dream is going to go tits up?

From now on, I am going to work with my own version of the 80/20 principle. Put simply, I will aim for an 80 per cent positive outcome and assume that 20 per cent will be bad, no matter what.

And usually, the bad is predictable (every anniversary, you have a huge fight with your partner, or every time you go on a long haul flight, you get a cold). Lowering your expectations leads to less overall misery because you’re not as bitterly disappointed. The only surprise will be what kind of badness will crop up.

This may sound negative but it’s practical. What do you think?