when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp

when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp

1. 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 of use of 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.

• 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.

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