5 Subtle Enemies of Preparedness (that trip all of us)

by Todd Walker

You see yourself as the ant, not the grasshopper. You want to be prepared but can’t seem to shake these 5 enemies. They turn your plans into puddles of tears. They use your dreams like a janitors mop on a filthy floor.

Avoid them!

1.) Perfectionism.

Pursuing perfection often means that nothing gets accomplished. No desired results. Nada. It’s impossible. Like a master artist brushing paint on canvas and never satisfied. She can’t let it go. The world never gets to see her masterpiece.

Take my blog, for instance. Please don’t go back and read my first posts from a year ago. They’re hideous. Has my writing improved? Maybe. Who cares. It’s something I create. It only matters to me.

Create something today – an idea or a new skill that builds resilience. Quality matters but will only come when we start doing the stuff. Action counts. Perfect is unattainable.

2.) Consensus.

Be an individual. If you wait on the committee’s approval, your effort is probably not worth doing anyway.

Do you really want GroupThink telling you your plan of action does not meet standards?

GroupThink levels you to the lowest common denominator.

3.) Weakness. 

Focus on your weakness and you become weaker. Do the stuff that makes you feel strong, invigorated, and in the flow. The molasses of the mind turns to raging river water. This is the place of your strength. The place where you lose track of time – you get lost in the moment – swept up in the momentum.

Delegate your weakness. This buys you precious time to develop your strengths.

4.) Knowledge.

Admit it. We’re all ignorant. The more I learn, the less I know. Peeling the next layer on the onion revels more of the same.

I read that we only use about 5% of our brain power. Hum, seems like such a small amount. Figure out how to use 6% and you’ll be a genius.

At some point though, all that knowledge reaches the point of diminishing returns. Apply the 80-20 rule. Increasing our effort to learn more about being prepared is noble, and can be achieved… in the head.

Practice what you learn. If you graph the relationship between what you know and what you do, the trend line would have a positive slope. And who said you’d never use algebra in the real world?

You’re only going to remember 50% of what you just read on this page once you click away. I’m being generous on this estimate. If the Pareto principle holds true, 80% of your knowledge comes from 20% of what you read.

I’d like to be in your 20% one day

5.) Habits.

Being in a groove is completely different from falling in a rut. Groove sounds so, uh, groovy. Rut is where all the stagnate water collects.

Rut is another word for bad habit. Grease the groove to get out of your rut. Bad habits aren’t final.

Got any you’d like to add? Please leave them in the comment section.

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