Hope for the best

A sentence I have been hearing at work lately. Too often for my liking. It reiterated to me how hope cannot be a strategy.

Hope should be used as fuel to bridge the remaining gap after we have done our best to influence the variables in our control. If we use it as our go-to mantra right from the offset, it just serves as an excuse for not doing our best. And if we have serious failings in our strategy, they will eventually catch up to us.

No amount of hope can be a substitute for the time and effort needed to do a task the right way.