Most companies have two forms of strategy: deliberate and emergent.

• Deliberate is what’s in the business plan, the PowerPoint Deck, the list of goals. And that’s what ends up changing 93% of the time.

• Emergent is what you find along the way. It’s when your baby nephew ignores the gift you bought him… but LOVES the shiny wrapping paper. The heart medication research… that ends up becoming Viagra. It’s unintended.

Your life is always a balance of deliberate and emergent — what you plan, and what pops up through serendipity.

So how do you know when to stick to the plan and when to change course with what comes along?

If your deliberate plan is paying your bills and you find it fulfilling, stay on the path. Pay less attention to the little things that pop up and double down on present course.

Ok, cool if it works... but how about for the non-business person?

It appears that any person's plans arise from an initial, emergent awareness that then leads to a resulting intention, that then leads to a plan of action with resulting direct experiences, that then leads to understanding and more emergent awareness from those direct experiences.  And then greater immediate progress, or not. My experience is that this cycle is not two separable strategies, but simply an applied strategy of intentional progress in full evolution.  

The perhaps false distinction is that when people encounter insights and unintended progressive results unrelated to their initial intentions along the way of working their plan they then ascribe these Eureka moments as somehow sitting outside the consequences of their strategy, when in fact it was utterly dependent upon it.

In other words, we're much more likely to discover more interesting things when we set out to discover any one thing than we are if we simply sit at home and intend to discover nothing at all.  And that also applies to finding out our life's purpose.

And ALL desired progress needs daily practice ...and nearly any daily practice with intention will suffice.

Agreed. Daily practice with intention matters.