PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE

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Everyday, we wake up with expectations and we go about our day to day activities trying to live up to and achieve these expectations. We go out of our way to make sure we at least make some progress in achieving out goals. Sometimes we are rewarded with results but sometimes, we are discouraged by failure.

There's lots of factors that can affect our performance and ultimately affect the results we are expecting. Yesterday, I wrote on self-esteem. You can find the article on self esteem here. Today, we will be discussing about preparation.

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Preparation in simple terms means planning ahead of time. One has a target and he works ahead of time to make the target easily achievable.

Most of the time when we fail, it is simply because we have no fore-knowledge of the task we have to perform or we have not planned carefully for the task to ease the performance of the task.

Preparation can come on different forms. It could be gathering information about a subject prior to an interview on the subject, arranging a venue ahead of a meeting, learning to drive before acquiring a car, rehearsing for a concert, buying insurance to cover for future losses amongst other examples that even you can generate for yourself everyday.

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The importance of planning can never be overemphasized. It is the bedrock upon which success is built. It increases the probability of successful performance of a given task noticeably. From the preparations, one can envisage possible issues that could arise and work towards eliminating the negative effects such issues can have on the real performance. We need to prepare for eventualities and have backups in place for almost everything to ensure a smooth performance.

We need to learn to plan ahead. Many people have gone through hell while performing tasks simply because they failed to put the right machineries in place and prepare properly. Many parties have crashed due to lack of planning, many presentations have gone awry due to lack of preparation.

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Learn to plan ahead. Walk yourself through a simulated scenario ahead of task performance. Think up everything that could go wrong and try to make necessary adjustments to mitigate against errors. Always remember that humans and machines can fail at any time. For this reason, have backups for indispensable machines and individuals.

Finally, work smart and aim to achieve a high level of efficiency in whatever you are doing. It helps to reduce the time and effort you would have to put into your performance. This is the most crucial part of your preparation.