Being well prepared is half the job
Saturday, 23. August 2008, 23:32:10
As I sit down and get ready to start on a yet another blog, I am glad I have made a list of topics I can choose from. Of course, we are in reality just talking about a bunch of notes that I have compiled into a more well-organized structure, but it is at least a good starting point to pick topics for a blog.
These ideas does normally not just pop up from nowhere. They are the end result of a more or less conscious thoughtprocess, but not something that is directly targeted at blogging per se. They are, for lack of a better word, part of the process of preparing.
In my opinion, being well prepared is much more important than being creative. Creativity is a rather fleeting state of mind. You may feel on top of the world for a while while the ideas just flows out of your brain - and then everything shuts down all of a sudden. And then you sit there with this unlit flashbulb above your head wondering what the heck just happened.
Other times being well prepared means that you can create good material without having to spend too much mental bandwidth on creating new ideas from scratch, and you can instead just use good old fashioned craftmanship in completing your work, while you spend your creative resources on other and perhaps more worthwhile projects.
So I have much higher regard for people who sits down and prepare a task before actually getting started on it. This can be a huge timesaver for all parties involved.
Of course, these are just my very personal thoughts as a professional. We are after all talking about a work methodology here. But could these thoughts also be applied to other concepts? Let us make a list of areas where preparation may be more than half the job;
These are all very trivial examples - it was really unnecessary to even put these points up. From this we can see that is more or less impossible to function properly in a society without the ability to plan ahead.
Perhaps we even could say that the ability to plan ahead and prepare may have been one of the defining criterias that made homo erectus evolve into homo sapiens. As one species evolved into another, perhaps also the first structured society did likewise.
So to summarize - may it even be that the ability to prepare is not only convenient for a person or a team to function, but crucial for the society to stick together? There has been a lot of talk about how morality may be *the* identifying aspect of a culture. Others claim that commerce is the real glue that tie a society together. There are also those who claim that shared identity may be the sole factor that makes a society tick. Asking a behaviourist, a psychologist, an anthrolopogist and a financeanalytic will give you very different answers. Which is only natural, I guess - they do all see things from their own point of view.
An anthrolopogist will claim that culture was created when people started doing art to convey thoughts and belief, and that the early religions probably created a framework for people to share ideas and interact within. A farmer will probably point to how important it was to domesticate animals and start with harvesting corn - with trading as a natural next step. Hmmm ... but I wonder what a politician would say? Never mind - I'm just digressing here.
My claim - and this is just my very own and personal claim - is that they may all be part of the bigger picture, but as the psychologist probably would agree with me in - every actions normally consists of a number of primitives. Small key elements that governs what actions to take in a given situation.
And the number one key primitive is probably the ability to have foresight. Foresight is what a person needs in other to prepare and and understand why it is important to be prepared.
So what happens to people that seems to lack the ability to prepare. Well, they tend to get by - but is probably not well regarded by most people - at least not in a modern society. They can be incredibly aggrivating to work with, and you feel they have very little respect for other peoples time. So perhaps people who lack this very important ability could be described as foresight-challenged?
There are of course a number of huge and gaping holes in some of the postulates I present here. One thing is the importance of preparation to oil the cogs of the great machinery of society, another is that it is fully possible to prepare too much. To never be able to get started on the work itself because one is locked in the preparation stage. This can again be attributed to the decision making process, which is truly like opening a can of worms.
However, as a closing statement I think it is safe to say without foresight, planning and preparation nothing would hold together on a cultural, ideological or even theological level.
And that should be a rather sobering thought - because who knows what may already have been planned, but not carried out yet?
These ideas does normally not just pop up from nowhere. They are the end result of a more or less conscious thoughtprocess, but not something that is directly targeted at blogging per se. They are, for lack of a better word, part of the process of preparing.
In my opinion, being well prepared is much more important than being creative. Creativity is a rather fleeting state of mind. You may feel on top of the world for a while while the ideas just flows out of your brain - and then everything shuts down all of a sudden. And then you sit there with this unlit flashbulb above your head wondering what the heck just happened.
Other times being well prepared means that you can create good material without having to spend too much mental bandwidth on creating new ideas from scratch, and you can instead just use good old fashioned craftmanship in completing your work, while you spend your creative resources on other and perhaps more worthwhile projects.
So I have much higher regard for people who sits down and prepare a task before actually getting started on it. This can be a huge timesaver for all parties involved.
Of course, these are just my very personal thoughts as a professional. We are after all talking about a work methodology here. But could these thoughts also be applied to other concepts? Let us make a list of areas where preparation may be more than half the job;
- Politics: yes, of course. In order to get advantage over your opponents, you need to know where to strike
- Dating: oh yes, it always pays off to know something about your partner so you can prepare for the best possible date
- Composing: yep, it makes a lot of things much easier if you know what the music is going to be used for, in what context it is going to appear, who is going to sing it etc.
- Cooking: why yes - you need to have all the right ingrediences in place before you start, but you do also need to know who is going to eat the food and how many there will be present.
- Driving: yes - it is not only a matter of choosing what road to take, but when to travel - and perhaps even how many passengers you want to bring along.
These are all very trivial examples - it was really unnecessary to even put these points up. From this we can see that is more or less impossible to function properly in a society without the ability to plan ahead.
Perhaps we even could say that the ability to plan ahead and prepare may have been one of the defining criterias that made homo erectus evolve into homo sapiens. As one species evolved into another, perhaps also the first structured society did likewise.
So to summarize - may it even be that the ability to prepare is not only convenient for a person or a team to function, but crucial for the society to stick together? There has been a lot of talk about how morality may be *the* identifying aspect of a culture. Others claim that commerce is the real glue that tie a society together. There are also those who claim that shared identity may be the sole factor that makes a society tick. Asking a behaviourist, a psychologist, an anthrolopogist and a financeanalytic will give you very different answers. Which is only natural, I guess - they do all see things from their own point of view.
An anthrolopogist will claim that culture was created when people started doing art to convey thoughts and belief, and that the early religions probably created a framework for people to share ideas and interact within. A farmer will probably point to how important it was to domesticate animals and start with harvesting corn - with trading as a natural next step. Hmmm ... but I wonder what a politician would say? Never mind - I'm just digressing here.
My claim - and this is just my very own and personal claim - is that they may all be part of the bigger picture, but as the psychologist probably would agree with me in - every actions normally consists of a number of primitives. Small key elements that governs what actions to take in a given situation.
And the number one key primitive is probably the ability to have foresight. Foresight is what a person needs in other to prepare and and understand why it is important to be prepared.
So what happens to people that seems to lack the ability to prepare. Well, they tend to get by - but is probably not well regarded by most people - at least not in a modern society. They can be incredibly aggrivating to work with, and you feel they have very little respect for other peoples time. So perhaps people who lack this very important ability could be described as foresight-challenged?
There are of course a number of huge and gaping holes in some of the postulates I present here. One thing is the importance of preparation to oil the cogs of the great machinery of society, another is that it is fully possible to prepare too much. To never be able to get started on the work itself because one is locked in the preparation stage. This can again be attributed to the decision making process, which is truly like opening a can of worms.
However, as a closing statement I think it is safe to say without foresight, planning and preparation nothing would hold together on a cultural, ideological or even theological level.
And that should be a rather sobering thought - because who knows what may already have been planned, but not carried out yet?
WIDGETIZE