How to Prepare for Everything
A step-by-step guide to ruining today.
Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be alright. Bob Marley might have oversold the optimism, but he had a point: stop overthinking what could go wrong, because it probably won’t.
Airports are full of them — people lugging carry-ons stuffed like they’re emigrating, when all they need is two days’ worth of clothes. Just in case, though, they’ve packed for snow, sun, power outages, and possibly the end of civilization.
Our minds pack the same way. We call it being responsible. I’m just being thorough, you say, while mentally rehearsing twenty-seven ways tomorrow’s meeting could go wrong. The coffee might spill, the slides might crash, your boss might suddenly ask you to explain blockchain in three bullet points. None of this is likely, but your brain is convinced disaster is just waiting to happen.
And it doesn’t stop. For every what if you solve, the brain spits out a sequel. Soon, you’re running a mental franchise of worst-case scenarios no one asked for.
Even if you somehow thought of everything — every twist, every trapdoor — it still wouldn’t help. Relief can only come from living through it and realizing you survived. No checklist can give you that proof in advance.
Meanwhile, the present gets silenced. You miss the taste of dinner because you’re drafting speeches for arguments that will never happen. You miss a good joke because you’re mid-simulation of a worst-case scenario. Overpreparation doesn’t just prepare you for nothing — it robs you of something.
And life rarely delivers the disasters you’ve practiced for. You brace for fire and flood, and what actually arrives is a leaky faucet — fixed with a wrench and a three-minute YouTube tutorial. In the end, it’s not heroics you need, just basic problem-solving.
Stop renting space to the imaginary future. Kick it out, and the present finally moves back in — with better food, funnier conversations, and fewer late-night strategy meetings in your head.
Overpreparation is like showing up to a picnic in full hockey gear — technically safe, but good luck squeezing your burger through the face cage.
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