when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp
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English
[edit]Proverb
[edit]when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp
- It is easy to lose sight of one's initial objective, becoming caught up in subtasks or in tasks only tangentially related to the original goal.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
Usage notes
[edit]- Numerous variants exist, using other body parts ("eyes", "ears", "ass"/"arse", "ankles", "armpits", etc) in place of "neck" and replacing "initial objective" with just "objective" or with "mission", "goal" etc.