Guiding Principles: Failing to Prepare is Preparing to Fail

I like collecting principles. They are like ready-made answers to all kinds of situations, saving me brainpower for the juicier questions the day might throw at me.

The aphorism “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” reminds me, through a witty play on words, of the value of preparing for upcoming situations whenever appropriate. It is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although that seems to be unfounded.

I don’t take it literally. I don’t believe I’ll fail at everything I don’t prepare for. But preparing in advance can indeed make things quite a bit easier, and sometimes, this catchy little phrase is just what I need to push me to do the right thing.

So where do I typically apply this?

Daily madness. Occasionally, in the evening, I will ponder whether to hop on the sofa and watch something on Netflix or whether I should prepare breakfast for the next morning when I’ll be on kids duty. Breakfast is a somewhat complex procedure in our family. If I can shave 10 minutes off the routine this way, it makes things less stressful, which in turns means a higher chance of leaving the house with the kids on time and in good spirits.

Business ventures. Towards the other end of the spectrum of consequences, preparing is crucial if you’re starting a business. You want to have your business plan as detailed and backed by research as you can, because you don’t want to base a whole chapter of your life and a substantial portion of your savings on rosy assumptions. I don’t start businesses every other month, but this is the type of big life decisions that I would never make without solid preparation.

On the road. I’ve had my packing list for 20 years now. In the past two decades, the only times I’ve forgotten to pack something was when I knowingly neglected to look at my packing list. It’s just such a convenient little tool to free my mind and speed up the packing process. In the beginning, I would print it and literally run around the flat looking at the list and chasing items down. Nowadays, I just look at it at the end to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. Separating planning from execution is a fantastic way to reduce stress.

Parenting. My wife and I, in an effort to reduce the number of conflicts with the children, recently listed the most common causes for conflict and planned how to respond in the future. Our daughter E jumps up from her chair five times a meal, which used to drive us mad. Nowadays, one of us just goes: “Boing!”. A much more humourful, and thus less conflict-prone, way of signalling that she’s not really supposed to do it.

Principles like this one encapsulate all the thinking I or someone else has done upfront in a catchy phrase. They save me energy in daily life and help me avoid mistakes.

They make life simpler. What’s not to like about that?