Yesterday I had a flight. It was about 3 hours, so I figured I would cast on with stash yarn for a sweater for my soon-to-be baby nephew. I cast on for an Elizabeth Zimmerman “Baby Surprise jacket,” but before I finished casting on, I decided I would make a cardigan instead. Same number of stitches cast on, so why not? I did a 2 by 2 rib and then decided that I wanted to do a cable sweater. I did some math in my head to figure out the cables. This is where I went horribly wrong. I spent the entire rest of the flight ripping and reknitting because I couldn’t get the math to work out. Now that I am done travelling, I have nothing to show for my work except for a few rows of ribbing. The moral of the story – an inch of planning would have been worth a yard of beautiful knitting.
A good life lesson, too…
Cantor's Canvas 
au contraire — it sounds like you have quite a bit to ‘show’ for your ‘work’
“Every undertaking begins with reason,
and consideration precedes every work.”
Apocrypha, The Wisdom of Ben-Sirach, 37:16