The curse of over-preparation

Actually Okay Advice #3

Photo by Jexo on Unsplash.

Welcome to the series of occasional posts I’m calling Actually Okay Advice, where I share a piece of advice I’ve come across that I think is pretty useful. These are things I’ve tried myself, and for the most part, continue to use. As always, YMMV.

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Check out the previous AOAs here and here.

Today’s post is inspired by the theme of last week’s: creativity and how to have more of it in your life. I wrote about advice for carving out time as well as dealing with the fear of openly expressing your creative side. If you can handle those challenges, you’re well on your way. But there’s another pitfall that might hold you back: the tempting rut of over-preparation.

I call it a tempting rut because this is a phase that feels so good to some of us that we’d love to stay there forever.

What does over-preparation look like? Feeling the need to read everything previously written about a topic you plan to write or speak about. Pouring over dozens of recipes for blueberry muffins before trying any out. Watching endless makeup tutorials and product reviews without ever picking up your brush.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with scrolling through videos forever. If your end goal is to kill some time and satisfy your curiosity about a subject, have at it. The problem is when that activity is supposed to prepare you for action, but becomes a proxy for that action and a form of procrastination. A rut.

The advice then, is to stop over-preparing and start before you’re ready.

Some of you probably felt something clench deep inside when you read those last four words. Start before I’m ready?? That sounds like a recipe for failure. Yup, that’s kind of the point.

Why you shouldn’t over-prepare

Let’s look at the first part of this general advice. I should say that it applies to just about everything, not just activities that fall under the umbrella of creativity. It’s especially relevant to things that are relatively new to us.

Over-preparing is a procrastination strategy masquerading as getting stuff done. It’s even more insidious than your run-of-the-mill procrastination, where you’re avoiding working on something and you know it. With over-preparation, you’re fooling yourself and maybe others into thinking that you’re tackling the task at hand.

Wait, but how do you know when regular old preparation has crossed over into over-preparation? Good question. For me, it’s a tightness in my chest that appears when I’m about to start really working on something, but instead of working through that feeling, I go back to my outlines or my reading as if the solution to my anxiety lies there.

I had great writing teachers from an early age in my suburban public schools. They taught me how to outline an essay and work from a solid structure. As I moved on to university and the essays got longer with more complex arguments, outlining served me well. To a point. I should have recognized I had a problem when one particular paper necessitated a mega-outline written on giant poster paper taped to my wall.

It wasn’t until years later, as I sat hunched over a notebook trying to work out exactly what I going to say about the troves of data in my dissertation research, that something dawned on me. Many have said it before, but it was new to me in that moment: writing is thinking.

I was trying to do all of the thinking—figuring out the point I ultimately wanted to draw from interesting tidbits of interview data—before I did any writing. I felt like I couldn’t start typing until I knew for certain where I was going. But the thing about it is this: you can’t know where you’re going until you start doing it. In this case, I couldn’t fully understand what the data was telling me until I actually started writing about it.

Not only was I stuck in a cycle of procrastination, my intense outlining was actually preventing me from accomplishing what I needed to do. You can’t fully choreograph a dance until you start dancing. You can’t plan every flavour in a dish until it’s actually cooking. You won’t know all the right words to say until your audience is in front of you.

As children, we’re almost never prepared for anything we do, from eating solid foods to walking to drawing to riding a bike. Our caregivers may try to lead us gradually into each new development, but ultimately we learn by doing, not by preparing to do. As we get older, the “gifts” of hindsight, memory, and the ability to predict consequences make it harder to do or try new things. We know what it’s like to fail, and we think we can control the outcome by preparing until we drop.

Why you have to start before you’re ready

A big part of it is just that you won’t really get better at something or even learn the basics until you try. Yes, you’ll fail, or more likely just be kind of shit at it for a while. Just like when you were a kid learning new things.

Furthermore, if you’re waiting for a clear signal, internal or external, that you’re ready for something, it might never come. Sure, we all have the odd moment of clarity and confidence that propels us toward something new or more advanced. But mostly we just have to stumble forward or take what feels like a leap. Our brains really want to protect us from danger (thanks, brain!), so they’re not likely to lead us enthusiastically to the cliff’s edge. The familiar—even if it’s not going anywhere—is much safer.

This waiting for a sign or for a particular condition to be met is probably more procrastination. Or an excuse. “I’ll start x when I have y” or “when [totally unrelated thing happens] I’ll do …”. Do you really need to wait?

When I was taking online training courses in coaching, the instructor told us to start coaching before we were ready. I could feel the wave of resistance from the class, even virtually. Her point was that we would always feel as though we could learn more, that what we had learned wasn’t quite enough. If we waited until we felt we’d learned it all, we’d never start.

Once I started coaching (and I still feel this, sometimes) it was hard not to over-prepare for each call. I felt like I needed a list of pre-written questions and handy solutions to whatever problems were raised. Not only is this impossible, it actually makes me a worse coach, because if I’m scanning a script, I’m not in the moment. I’m not listening and not responding to the client, not truly. I have to let go of over-preparation and trust that my experience is preparation enough.

I’ve noticed myself falling into this trap with Spanish classes. I’ll download the lesson plan and try to come up with the answers ahead of time. But this is defeating the purpose of the class, which, for me, is to practice speaking and listening live. I never feel ready. But no one speaking a new language ever does! There’s no level to reach on Duolingo that will suddenly convince me I’m ready to have a spontaneous conversation.

The other important thing to remember is that our bodies and minds often are ready to make big leaps. As a kid I made the jump from children’s books to adult classics long before any sign that I was ready, and without needing to go slowly step-by-step through every reading level.

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When I first took up running (okay, jogging) I was extremely skeptical when told that once you could jog for 20 minutes, you could do a 5K, and once you could do a 5K, you could do a 10K. But it was true.

What are you waiting for?

I’m a planner, I love to organize things, and I hate to fail.

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So I’m a prime candidate for over-preparation. That moment when it hit me that “writing is thinking” has stuck with me, though. I still use outlines when I write but I’m a lot looser with them and I don’t expect them to help me clarify my argument or formulate my conclusions. I do that by writing, and then, of course, revising like it’s going out of style.

Maybe you can remember times when you broke out of preparation mode and just started doing. Or you took a leap to an advanced level and were shocked to find that you were actually already ready. So what are you busy over-preparing for that you could just, you know, do?

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What I’m reading: Just finished a couple of good mysteries, including Ruth Ware’s The It Girl. Definitely kept me guessing until the end! I also really liked Lisa Jewell’s The Truth About Melody Browne. This isn’t a spoiler but let me say how refreshing it was to read a book where even though the main character had a difficult childhood with various tragedies, none of the adults in her life abused her; in fact, they all did their best, with varying degrees of success. So rare to read a mystery/thriller like this where women and girls aren’t subjected to hideous violence.

What I’m watching: I watched the movie Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I wasn’t familiar with Marcel before hearing an interview with Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp on the Death, Sex and Money podcast. But I was intrigued! And I enjoyed the film. Very compelling visually and even I’m not jaded enough to dislike Marcel.

Something fun that happened: Last week it was a good friend’s 50th birthday. A bunch of us clubbed together to pay for a backyard sauna rental at her house for the weekend. This is a thing you can do, apparently. Bonfires, robes, Prosecco, friends… perfect time.

1. Your mileage may vary.

2. This is how I came across the word “masochist” and ended up putting it on our classroom chalkboard “list of words we found while reading and didn’t the know the meaning of.” Facepalm.

3. Classic Enneagram type 3.