Why a bad plan is better than no plan

If you were to be dropped in the middle of nowhere with nothing except a roughly sketched out map of the area, would you take the map and try to make the most of it, or would you go without?

Chances are high that you would at very least take the map with you. It’s better than nothing, right?

The problem for many of us is that we often choose to walk aimlessly in our athletic endeavours (and in life) without any sort of a real plan. We just show up. And we start to believe that this is going to be enough. We think that if we just drag ourselves to each training and lifting session, we will have enough.

But here’s the reality, EVERYONE else is showing up too. Your opponents and your teammates are already right there doing the same thing. And if you are doing the same thing, you are never going to get ahead.

This is why sometimes it’s better to have a BAD plan, over no plan at all.

With a bad plan, you give yourself, at the very least, a sense of direction. You provide yourself with something to aim towards and adapt as you go along.

Don’t live your life in No Man’s Land

The term “No Man’s Land” was coined during WWI and it signifies the area between two opposing forces. If you found yourself caught here, your chances of survival were slim. Not only were you being shot at by your enemy, but also by your allies behind you.

Getting caught in this position in our daily life is mentally devastating and can hold us back from getting anywhere. And the problem is that many of us find ourselves here thinking everything is “all good”. However, this is only because the real warfare has yet to start. Everything is easy, calm, and quiet here until the shooting begins. And unfortunately, it’s often not until we get a significant wake-up call that we realize we’ve been in the wrong place all along.

So, before you just show up today, come up with a plan. It doesn’t even have to be all that good. But it’s better to at least have something rough you can aim towards rather than nothing at all.