We have all been there. You try something new. You plan it carefully and put in all the effort. And then it fails.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
My mother might have been an idiom expert. She would use them all the time in everyday conversation. I think many of us, of a certain generation, do just that.
After something went wrong, I would often hear her say. “Well, it’s back to the drawing board then.”
When I was very young, I might wonder where or what this “drawing board” was. Whatever it was, we didn’t have one.
It’s a familiar idiom that is used when a plan hasn’t worked out as expected. It means we must start again from scratch. It carries a sense of disappointment with it, but it suggests not giving up. Time to have a rethink and try again.