A well-maintained life contains fewer emergencies disguised as surprises.

Many so-called surprises were entirely foreseeable and simply not attended to: the ageing appliance, the neglected friendship, the symptom, the account nobody checked. A life with regular maintenance has fewer of these, because the things that would have become emergencies were handled while they were still ordinary tasks.

When something goes wrong, ask afterwards whether it was genuinely unforeseeable. If it was not, the lesson is a scheduling one rather than a matter of bad luck.