Better Preparedness Leads to Opportunities
Planning + Action + Consistency > hard_work
Do you ever see someone you know like a friend, a coworker, or an online acquaintance and think to yourself,
“If only if I was as lucky as they were.”
The truth is, you could be just as lucky they are.
“Birds of a feather, flock together.”
We go through similar stages of hardships at different times at slightly different paces and we learn similar lessons. Despite being similar with your peers, your hard work sometimes doesn’t seems like it’s enough to be on par with where you want to be. You and your peers are at the same level, but they seem to always excel your hard work and they don’t work any harder than you do. The key to bringing yourself luck to achieve your goals is better preparedness, not by working harder.
Being better prepared will instantly improve your ability to achieve. To be prepared means you had known in advanced your end goal, broken down that goal into manageable steps to achieve it, and have been consistently taking action to carry out each step you’ve laid out. Having clearly defined steps helps you to break down hurdles and prepare effectively by not waste time from being overwhelmed due to trying to do too much at the same time.
Better your preparation with:
1. Clarity
2. Direction
3. Planning
4. Consistency
The first step to being better prepared is to gain clarity of what you want to achieve. Not having clarity of your goals, achievements, or who you want to become is like getting into a car, starting the engine, and not knowing where you want to go. Knowing your destination before getting into the car is an important first step. Spend some time considering what goals, achievements, or reality you want to achieve. Prioritize what’s most important and from background noise that poses as a distraction. It’s often difficult to separate needs from wants because human greed makes us feel like we need our wants, but it is ultimately necessary to do so.
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” — John F. Kennedy
The next step is to find direction. Find individuals who’ve walked and lived the path you want and follow their lead. Evaluate the gaps between your knowledge, experience, and other shortcomings to identify the steps that you require to bring yourself on par with your future self. Doing online research and starting conversations are effective methods of finding direction.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antonie de Saint-Exupery
Planning. Plan on how you will break down the gaps into realistic smaller manageable components you can work on. Without a plan, it’s easy to fall off course and become paralyzed from being overwhelmed.
“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.”- E. James Rohn
The last step in improving your preparedness is consistency. Having consistent action to improve yourself over time is the best way to make yourself more relevant. Putting in the hours to learn a topic over time helps to move what you’ve learned and practiced from your short term memory to long term memory. Not only will you have a better understanding of the material, you will also be able to retrieve material from your long term memory. If you were consistent enough, you wouldn’t need to put in as much much effort to hack away at a grueling 2,000 hours of quality work compared to putting in 12 consecutive hours of preparation to catch up for lost time.
At this point you are ready and prepared for opportunities to fly your way! Unfortunately, opportunities rarely fall into our hands. Sharing your work online with potential employers and members of a community helps you to gain feedback and let the digital world you’re prepared and ready for opportunities. When an opportunity does come knocking on your door, you will be ready to seize the day! Instead of needing 3–5 days to take advantage of yesterday’s opportunity.
Consistent practice and maintaining the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired these past couple months of work is going to be important. Your luck won’t jump 200%, but when an opportunity appears it won’t pass you by. You’ll be prepared to be one of the lucky ones. When your preparation meets opportunity, you’re the lucky one.
Understand your situation.
Find out what you need to do it.
How would you go about to do it.
Be persistent and believe in your process in becoming who you wanted to be, then luck will always be on your side.
I’ll give a couple examples one from academia and one from work.
For instance, whenever I needed to study for an examination, I would first need to have a clear understanding of my professor’s teaching and testing style. I would gauge the professor for direction to find out which topics they had the most and least interest in. I would plan my studies by focusing on what was most and least mentioned. Least mentioned important topics are a great differentiators between 70% and 80%+ students. Lastly I would remain consistent by spending an hour or two a day reviewing topics. When my exam scores came in, I scored higher than the majority of my peers, and my peers had this perception I was the lucky one since we’d study together.
The truth is that Tyche, the goddess of chance, rarely has her hand in the game. Being perceived as lucky is usually a misinterpretation of the product of preparedness colliding with opportunities.
Another example would be when I had found a job. I identified gaps between the role I was pursuing and my current position. I worked on my skills to be more adequate by working on my technical and soft skills to bring them up to par. It was a journey I had to take to reach my next stepping stone, but nonetheless it was a necessary plan of action to pursue my goal.
Of course no one can make themselves more lucky to win a lottery ticket or more chips at a casino or anywhere. However, there are steps any person can take to improve their likelihood of achievement.
After all there’s a huge array of choices you could make every single day. All it takes to be consistent is one decision a day to choose whether you want to make the right choice for the sake of your future ambitions.
“It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” — Les Brown
