It’s the age-old adage isn’t it? ‘Failing to prepare is preparing to fail’. Quite frankly, I think this saying, instilled into me from a young age, is quite possibly responsible for me taking so long to get to where I wanted to be.
Whilst I do agree that running headlong into something without even thinking it through can get you into hot water, you can get so bogged down with the thought of having to be 100% completely prepared for every eventuality before you take one step forward, you can end up stuck forever in the preparation phase.
So how do you find the right balance?
Firstly, figure out what you’re preparing for. It sounds silly, but it’s easy to lose sight of the end goal when you start thinking about the how instead of the what.
When you’ve done that, do something to keep that end goal in the forefront of your mind (I like big post-its or lists but maybe you like pictures or mind-maps) so you don’t forget about it and get side tracked.
Next, keep moving. Work out each stage and once you’ve got an idea of one stage, take action on it. Whilst you’re actioning that you can look at the next step but at least you’re moving forward.
Work out what your secondary gain is. I’m going to be covering this in another post soon but in essence, a secondary gain is what you gain from your problem – in this case, over preparing so you never actually move forward.
Ask yourself, ‘am I scared to move forward?’ ‘is this a confidence issue?’ ‘am I a perfectionist who can’t bear the thought of getting something wrong and (god forbid) have to learn from it?’
If you do have problems with the likes of the above, you are not alone. I spent years procrastinating, telling myself I had to get this right or that right, or wait to finish this course or for this person to get back to me before I could do anything. I realised eventually that actually, I was scared of moving forward and failing. Once I admitted that to myself, and used some of my super duper confidence tricks (coming soon to those on the mailing list – hint hint!), everything suddenly became a lot easier.
Above all – DO SOMETHING! It doesn’t matter how small, and it doesn’t even have to be perfect (I know – crazy right? ) We can actually use these baby steps to work out what works and what doesn’t and use them to develop the plan rather than plan everything to the last detail, have something go wrong in the first stage and have to start again from scratch!
Decide what you’re going to do today to make sure next big step forward. It doesn’t have to be big, it just have to be a positive move in the right direction. Tell me about it in the comments below or tweet or email me!