Preparation, not practice, makes perfect

Preparing to do the work is as important as actually doing it. 

Picture this —

You’re walking down the street, taking in a sun-filled summer’s day. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a man dangling from the side of a building. He’s sitting on a piece of wood no bigger than the seat of a child’s swing set. The wood is attached to a piece of rope, strung around a chimney on the roof of a rickety old house. It should be noted that this particular chimney was not intended to be a load-bearing structure, let alone the sole object preventing the man from plummeting to his death (as if any chimney in the history of the world was meant to serve this purpose).

Now, I can’t tell you exactly what was going through this man’s head when he decided that the cliffhanger approach was the best way to paint this particular portion of the house — the part that was too high for the ladder to reach. But I can tell you that this man is my uncle. I should also tell you that I wasn’t actually there to witness this feat. In fact, I wasn’t even born yet.

You see, this particular sequence of events is the setup to one of many infamous stories my father would tell at EVERY family gathering. As soon as the wine and whiskey began to flow, so too did my father’s stories. Of course, he wasn’t alone; my uncles joined him in the performance — reliving the summer they all worked for my father on his painting crew.

As the story goes, my father supervised this group of three (or more) stooges. They’d paint houses, both interior and exterior, as a means of making some cash as a side hustle or when they were in between jobs. From the way they talk about it, you’d think they had their own special on HGTV.

Here’s the thing —

Even if I’d never heard the stories about my dad’s past life as a painter, I would have figured it out sooner or later. Given the number of paint brushes and drop clothes piled in the shed, it was fairly obvious that he’d done some painting in his day. That or he had a Pollok-esque hobby he was keeping from all of us. The first time we painted a room together ruled out the possibility that my dad was a closeted artist. Still, he approached painting a room the same way I imagine da Vinci approached painting the Mona Lisa.

I love my dad, but come on! The man was OCD when it came to painting. But the thing is— he couldn’t care less about the painting part. It was the preparation he obsessed over.

Spackle the nail holes!

Did you sand there? It doesn’t look like it!

He’d spend hours applying and reapplying blue painter’s tape. Then came the primer, which was the foundation upon which the top-coat would live — making it the most critical component of painting the closet we were standing in.

Did you catch that? We were going to great lengths to assure the successful application of paint in a closet! Bare in mind, the painting could only begin after the painfully slow process of cutting-in the corners and ceiling (a task that, according to my father, I was incapable of performing with precision).

I’m going to be honest with you here, I HATED painting with him. Especially when I realized that he approached every single task with the this kind of obsessive preparation — which made me hate every household chore more than the typical teenager.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. ― Abraham Lincoln

Thankfully, I came around —

It took a little time (some 10 years or so), but eventually I saw the wisdom my father was trying to bestow upon me — the fact that the finish coat is the easy part. It’s the preparation that’s the real bitch.

Think about it. Writing a book is brutal. Writer’s block and rewrites. Edits and the quest for the elusive perfect title. But the abstract you write when you’re posting the finished product on Amazon, the final product that everyone sees on the shelves at the bookstore — that’s like the cherry on top of the sundae.

Or, how about the startup you’re pitching to investors? The one you’ve spent the last five years honing in coffee shops and coworking spaces. At this point, you have a website and users. You’re cashflow positive and preparing to scale. Yeah, your pitch deck looks fan-freaking-tastic now — after two pivots and more perseverance that any sane person can fathom. And your reward? You land the investment you were seeking.

So why did you winout? According to everyone else it was luck. Or a stroke of genius. Or my personal favorite, you knew somebody at the top. But you and I (and my dad) know the real reason why you succeeded where others failed. It’s because you took the time to prepare.

You mastered the ins and outs of your industry. Filled the nail holes with spackle. Listened to your editor’s feedback. You did your research on your competitors. Cut-in the corners with care. Fact-checked your fact-checkers. You practiced your pitch, citing examples and case studies and projections that were fine tuned with laser focus.

You weren’t lucky or well connected. It wasn’t chance or nepotism. You were prepared and it paid off.

Congrats. The finish coat looks pristine.

We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation. — Thomas Edison