CHAPTER 1: POWER OF PREPARATION

"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure " Confucius 27.

It may seem insignificant in some aspects of business and your day-to-day tasks but, you should never underestimate the power of preparation.

Here’s why… The quality of your preparation will directly influence the quality of your performance.

The best way to increase your confidence is to increase your level of preparation. Utilize every resource you need to fulfill your potential. When you mentally prepare, it not only strengthens the belief that success is possible it strengthens the belief that it is probable.

The importance of preparation cannot be stated enough. Planning and preparation are not always the most fun daily activities but a certain amount of time and effort is necessary to prevent stress and last-minute issues. You need to be active and plan to deliver.

Preparation is about doing work in advance to be ready for the next step. Allow yourself to approach situations with all the information you need beforehand. Your boss or client has to make critical decisions and contribute to significant business discussions. They need all the facts clear in their mind before they walk into a meeting to be effective in their role.

Do not just send some documents to their inbox. When it comes to big meetings, people need time to read through the information, draw conclusions and decide what questions they want to ask.

As a Virtual Assistant, you must prepare the documents your boss or client needs. However, you also need to help them prepare by carving out some time in their calendar to read the information you have given them. To do this, you need to have planned and worked out what every task or meeting needs from your boss or client, so you can both fulfill your obligations.

Lack of preparation typically results in stress and anxiety because you have to provide documentation or solutions without the time you need to do it properly. When you are working ahead of time, you have time to do the job properly, think carefully about what you are doing, and get any extra information you need.

• Preparation is Key for Professionals

Planning allows you to prepare for meetings, events, and tasks before they are due, and you need to work smart. It may seem like a waste of time, but preparation can make the difference between being productive and just being tired.

IMPORTANCE OF PREPARATION

1. Helps In Planning

Whenever a new task, meeting date, or project comes across your desk, schedule some time in your calendar to prepare for it accordingly. Think about how you will achieve your objectives, what you need from other people to help you, and any challenges you have to deal with beforehand.

This might include a reminder to contact a colleague for a plan for a meeting. For example, if you are involved in a new project, set aside time to read through the subject matter and determine what meetings or information you will need to complete your responsibilities.

2. Helps You Listen

You will spend much less time preparing if you learn to listen carefully to what your colleagues are saying. Listen to their opinions about projects and how things are working right now. You can then identify how this will impact your workload and the requirements of your boss or client.

3. Helps In Problem-solving

Even with super-human preparation skills, you cannot avoid things occasionally going wrong or issues cropping up unexpectedly. However, you can learn to be quick and creative at problem-solving, so you are confident you can deal with any unexpected events quickly.

One way of getting more effective at problem-solving is making time in your preparation to think about anything that could go wrong and what you will do if it does. You will soon be able to identify likely issues and develop a list of ways you will deal with them at the last minute.

4. Helps In Time Management

The importance of preparation is so critical, and it can also help you find if something is worth doing. Few things waste your time more than working on the wrong project. So it is wise to check first if something is worth doing. Is it the best use of your time and resources? Is there another project that can give you a better return on your investment? Spend time to find out whether or not the project is feasible. The time saved from not doing the wrong project far outweighs the time spent researching it.

5. Aids Your Efficiency

Preparation helps you find the most efficient way to do things. Once you decide that a project is worth doing, the next step is finding the most efficient way to do it. Virtual Assistants who do not decide on the most efficient way will use the first method they can think of or ones with which they are familiar.

The chance is there are other methods out there that can do things better and faster, so do some research to find them. One good way is by watching how the best people in your fieldwork. Find several models and observe the advantages and disadvantages of their methods. Pay special attention to methods that are radically different from what you know. Then combine the best techniques to create something that suits your style and situation.

6. Helps In Your Learning And Growing

Preparation prepares you for an opportunity, and you should not prepare yourself only when you have a project ahead. You should keep building your skills and knowledge even when there is no project. Keep learning, keep growing, and open your eyes. That way, when the opportunity comes, you will be ready to grab it.

While The Importance of Preparation is Crucial, Avoid Being Over-Prepared

You could be over-prepared. Being over-prepared is dangerous because you may take action way too late or never take action. Even worse, some people use preparation as an excuse not to take action. Do not let this happen to you. Do only the preparation that significantly contributes to your project and your personal growth. Prepare well but do not over-prepare.

Here are just some of the benefits preparation can have on your day-to-day life;

1. Time Saver

Being prepared for the day, week or month ahead saves you time in the long run. There is little time spent looking for notes before a meeting or searching for slides you have misplaced for a presentation.

2. Increases Productivity

Being prepared helps the flow of your day. Enabling you to accomplish more tasks on your to-do list more effectively.

3. Decreases Overwhelming

Being disorganized and underprepared can cause a huge amount of overwhelm. It can lead to a lack of motivation and fatigue.

4. Increases Productivity

Being prepared increases your productivity and helps you to feel a sense of achievement and motivation for the day ahead.

CHAPTER 2: WHY PREPARATION IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR SUCCESS

Success Is Born When Preparation Meets Opportunity.

1.   Preparation makes you seize opportunities for success

The richest 1% owns more wealth than the rest of the human race

How is it possible that the richest 1% owns more wealth than the rest of the human race? Perhaps they are all entrepreneurs in their respective endeavors. If they are entrepreneurs, are the rest of the world onlookers?

Certainly not. Then what truly sets these individuals apart from the rest of the world?

Like you, I was quite puzzled by the scenario where a few occupy the top position in the world income distribution. Not for long though. I discovered that successful people understand how to prepare for great opportunities.

I love track and field events. The likes of Usain Bolts have recently made it more exhilarating to watch. However, the story of Usain Bolt resonates with my earlier statement that successful people are prepared entrepreneurs.

Usain Bolt has always shown interest in the race track event and worked hard to become a 200m champion. He did win the 2007 World Junior Championships held in Kingston. Yet, no one thought he would win the 100m race, much less become the world record holder.

Usain Bolt is about 6’5 frame which was expected to be a hindrance in the track event but he turned it into an explosive power through hard work. In fact, Usain Bolt trained his body to overcome the present limitation and seized the opportunity to become the fastest man alive.

Let’s pause a bit. Usain was preparing to become a 200m expert and in the process, he saw the opportunity to be the fastest man in the world. How would he have discovered this if he was not applying himself? Opportunities are all around us but we can only access them in our prep room.

It is fair to say that the richest 1% are entrepreneurs who can see through the lens of time, the need, and aspirations of the human race.

Their achievements did not happen by chance. They all labored as you have strenuously pushed to be here in this world. Opportunity is created daily and it’s all around us. Yet, only a few are able to seize it and turn it into a blessing.

Mark Zuckerberg saw the need for social interaction and created Facebook. The likes of Amazon and eBay jumped on the need for online retail outlets and today they are successful. The early men saw the need for light and they endlessly sought to create fire. Truly, opportunity is the daily creation of the human race and it’s wrapped up in our needs and value system.

However, seizing these opportunities is what creates the defining moment for winners to emerge.

They say success is born when preparation meets opportunity.

 The success we all seek is here right now. It’s disguised routinely as an opportunity but how prepared are you to seize it? Preparation is the variable that must be earned and honed to become and remain a winner in any sphere of life. After all, there are more than a billion of us, a pool of opportunities waiting to happen but I choose to seize mine.

Let’s pause and listen to the two great minds of our time, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates.

During a question and answer session at Columbia Business School, Bill Gates made emphasis on two outstanding opportunities of our time-artificial intelligence (A.I) and clean energy.

These are two exciting lifetime careers and if he had to start all over again he would focus on these two.

Warren Buffett believes that greater opportunities are seized when we look for the job that we would take if we didn’t need a job. He would become an investor if he had to start all over again.

One thing is peculiar with these two great minds, seizing an opportunity and investing the resources required to attain noticeable achievements. What bothers me most is not the numerous opportunities that are created daily but the few prepared minds. You see, opportunity is a present occurrence while preparation is how you spent your time in the past. Whilst there are many opportunities today there are fewer people ready to seize it.

My question to you is what are you doing right now?

Bill Gates started Microsoft in 1970, launched Windows in 1985, took the company public in 1986 and by 1999 his wealth was over 100 billion. In all of this, I see an opportunity presenting itself to Bill Gates, and each of them was met with a prepared mind.

Preparation for Bill Gates was a daily action.

• Preparation is a seed that should be sown on a daily basis.

It may take time and pain but the reward is sure. The question right now is what are you preparing for? If you are in preparation mode, you will see the right opportunity to seize.

• Think of preparation as a mustard seed.

When you plant the seed, it takes a few years to become a tree.

A tree in itself is an embodiment of purpose that seizes the opportunity to provide shelter for birds and people. Actually, opportunities are only identified in the place of preparation.

When you apply yourself to developing your craft through knowledge and skill acquisition, you gradually begin to notice the void around your craft. A desire to fill that void grows until you seize that opportunity. I hail from a country with one of the largest crude oil reserves in the world. Prior to when this commodity became a worldwide necessity, no one saw this product as a wheel of change to global energy.

In fact, in the 19th century, even though ancient societies have used petroleum seeps since prehistoric times, the commodity was never traded. The commercial discovery of oil was coincidental with the search for salt brine.

It turns out that during the search for salt water, some of the drillers struck oil but they considered it as a nuisance. I am quite sure you are wondering how naive these people were. This brings me back to my earlier point that preparation allows you to see opportunities.

In some cases, the opportunity might redirect your plan as in the case of oil instead of salt brine. If your level of preparation is shallow you are likely not to see the oil. These folks were all after salt and they missed what would be one of the highest commodity exchanges in the future.

However, in 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake thought about the commercial benefit of the petroleum seep in large volume and decided to set one goal, to produce crude oil in commercial quantity.

Drake embarked on this quest. He was laughed at, ridiculed, and ran into debt. In 1859, the same day Drake received a letter stating that all his financial backers were pulling out, he struck oil. The excavation produced 20 barrels of oil per day. Drake met that opportunity with adequate preparation.

• Are you prepared for your opportunity?

2. Preparation Precedes Success

  "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,  l' d spend the first six hours sharpening my axe "Abraham   Lincoln

All of us have goals, desires, and dreams. We may not call them these names, but we each have something we are aiming for—for our businesses, our families, and ourselves.

You might be working to roll out a new strategic plan at work.

Maybe you’re just trying to eat healthier and lose some weight. Perhaps you have a focused financial goal and are working hard to get out of debt. Or maybe you just want to get your toddler potty-trained!

From the biggest goals down to just the things we want, preparation is crucial to success. If we are truly serious about achieving something, we need to be as serious—if not more serious—about how we prepare for it.

If we are truly serious about achieving something, we need to be as serious—if not more serious—about how we prepare for it.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six hours sharpening my axe.”In other words, if what we are trying to achieve is important, our preparation is equally important.

It may even take more time to prepare for the work required to achieve our goals than the time it takes to actually get it done.

American businessman and New York Times best-selling author Harvey McKay takes it one step further:

I subscribe to the wisdom of the oft-quoted sports maxim [Vince Lambardi],

• “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.”

Many people have the will to win, but they aren’t willing to put in the hard work and time required to become great at something. What makes this even more challenging is that preparation is not a one-time thing. You can’t prepare to win once and then just let success flow. Great performers possess the will to prepare to win over and over again.

For those of us who are not naturally prone to prepare (hand raised here!), McKay’s words are especially challenging. Preparation is hard work, and it’s required to achieve something great. But it can’t just be a one-time thing.

• On-going success is tied to ongoing preparation.

If we want to be people who achieve our goals, we have to be people who are always prepared.

Before the final session of our ADDO team retreat last month, I sat down with Elizabeth, our chief of staff, and we asked three questions for the rest of our team. After they leave this retreat, what do we want them to know? How do we want them to feel? And what do we want them to do?

We decided to write down these goals, and they looked something like this:

KNOW: We want to be confident of ADDO’s future, of our financial position, and aware of all of the projects and initiatives underway.

FEEL: We want them to feel inspired, challenged, and refreshed.

DO: We want them to be motivated to personally develop in order to help our organization grow.

We prepared in advance what, and how, we would communicate with our team, with the hope that they would work to prepare themselves for ADDO’s future.

So what is your goal, aim, or dream? Are you preparing yourself for it?

Take some time this week to evaluate how you can strategically prepare to achieve your personal and professional goals.