Victory Likes Careful Preparation. What next?

We all have heard or felt this phrase, or at least some version of it, at least once through our lives.
This is a very practical and applicable phrase, and I absolutely agree, victory does like careful preparation. But how do we prepare? What do we prepare? When do we prepare? How long do we prepare for? It’s so easy to get boggled by these questions, sometimes enough to paralyse us, make it impossible to take action. What do we then?

To Take Action

I have a very nice reminder for when I fail to take action on anything, or am too stuck in my own head to take action, or paralysed for any other reason:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way, becomes the way.”

I came across this when I read Ryan Holiday’s, “The Obstacle Is The Way” and I highly recommend it to everyone.

A huge project will always have all the aforementioned questions, be it personal, academic, or professional. At that point in time, we must simply think of a single problem to solve, that is doable, and build from there. It could be as simple as just sitting down, and writing the heading of the paper you’re working on, or going next door and trying to sell your product, or trying to do one knee pushup. It could be anything. The point of this is not to do it well, or even do it right, the point is to do it. In doing so, you can learn innumerable things from it. “Why didn’t they buy my product? Was it the product itself? Was it my communication? Did I not sell it well enough? How do I get better at selling? What do I write after the heading? Is the table of contents the right approach? How do I do a knee pushup? Can I do something easier instead to get there?” And the questions can go on. But if you notice, each question is now a new opportunity. It is now something else that you can work on. And it DOES support your main goal, just that it is one of its foundational building blocks. And step by step, goal by goal, you’ll build a solid foundation, and then things will flow. But the point is simply to start. Not start well, not start optimally, but just start. Messy. Inefficient. Unoptimised. But a start nonetheless.

Plans Fail

Plans fail, and its normal. Not every plan is designed to work out. If it were, every diligent planner in the world would be successful. Life’s too unexpected. Somebody you know could get hurt on a day you planned to dedicate entirely on your project. Somebody could need your guidance, a pipe might burst in the kitchen, family could stop by unexpectedly, you could have other urgent priorities. This happens. It cannot be accounted for. And that’s the point. You need to keep going despite plans failing. And sometimes, you could plan and execute everything diligently, with lady luck smiling on your fate, and you could still miss an obvious step. It’s just how it is. I want to share one particular instance of this from my life.

How I Messed Up

This is not a very fond memory for me, definitely not one that I can recall without reliving the extreme stress. For our purpose of answering the question though, it’s very helpful.

It was my final year at university in my undergrad, and I picked a difficult research topic, one which stretched me in my abilities as a coder, problem solver and chess player. I did have the initial questions that led to paralysis, but I applied the logic I stated earlier and somehow got the ball rolling.

I wanted to be able to incorporate human behaviour, especially mistakes, into a machine. I decided to use chess as a medium, and used LC0 to do this. I won’t go into details of the project, that’s out of scope here.

I planned for the project. Took the required math and machine learning classes in the summer. Familiarised myself with everything I needed for this. Read as many papers as I could. And the months went by smoothly. I planned, executed it well, and it paid off. Until it didn’t. I had all the code, all the data, all the results, and in fact, it was a successful project, I achieved my goal (to a certain extent) and was very happy with myself.

You see, I managed to complete the project on time, but left no time to actually WRITE the paper. THIS is the part that really took everything out of me. Spent a week sleeping for 2-3 hours daily, kept writing, reading and re-reading the paper, over and over, until it made sense. And I finally submitted it, 15 minutes late, as the software I wrote it on decided to mess up the formatting just before I submitted it. I still managed to get 80/85 on it, losing the 5 marks only due to the late submission.

‘The Next’ Matters.

So why this story? Well, it illustrates the importance of the title very well, so well I daresay that my preparation alone earned me the 80 marks I did obtain. However, I want to touch a deeper point. We all plan for victory. And we achieve it if we prepare, plan and execute well, with a little help from lady luck. But what we mostly forget, is to have something ready for AFTER the victory. For me, due to the complexity of the project, the victory laid in just successfully completing the training, testing, and interviews. That was the victory that I achieved. ‘The Next’ part was something I didn’t consider, I underestimated it. I wish I knew Parkinson’s Law then:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.“

Had I known this, I probably would’ve planned better for the actual writing part. It sounds obvious now, but back then, it really wasn’t. And I also felt really stupid.

The Takeaway

Plan. Prepare. Execute. Sounds simple enough, but reality is always different.

I am not discouraging any of the above mind you, they’re all important steps in order to complete any task or project. But perseverance plays a far more crucial role, both in getting started, and going on when things don’t go as planned.