A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 19

A backup plan sounds like prudence. Innocent’s suspicion is that much of what carries the name works against the plan it claims to protect, and the test is simple: does yours widen your chances, or hand you a way out?

He saw it when someone asked what he would do if he didn’t succeed at what he was doing, and called that a backup plan. It made him ask why any plan should wait for failure to begin. One built that way quietly helps produce what it prepares for: “It creates a reason for me to feel secure and not really try hard.” It also thins your self-confidence and the worth of what you are doing, and can leave you blind to opportunities as they arrive.

A real one runs the other way — more routes to the same end, more options inside the original vision. The confusion, he decided, is that “people mistake fallbacks for backup plans.”