Life is great at surprising us. That is why it’s so important to plan ahead as much as we can so we are prepared for any obstacle we may face.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: So, I thought that today would be a good day to talk about preparedness, which is something that, you know, affects us in a lot of different ways in our lives, and also affects us as a society, as a country, as a culture. And, you know, I am someone who admittedly, is not always very well prepared, and I tend to be a huge procrastinator. So even if I do prepare for something, it’s usually kind of at the last possible time to do it. And I think there are ways that you can kind of, you know, if you know that that’s how you are and that’s how your brain tends to work, you can kind of hack it and make it work for you. So I’ll talk about some ways that I have kind of learned how to do that over the years of school and work. But, yeah, there’s a lot of wisdom, I think, in being prepared for what life is gonna throw at you and being prepared for the responsibilities that you’ve taken on. And that’s, it’s kind of a famous Boy Scout slogan to say, always be prepared. And I think in the Boy Scout sense, they’re talking about having, you know, fire starters and knowing how to tie knots and stuff like that, and kind of survival skills if you get stranded in the woods, which those are awesome things to know. But I think that saying can really give us a lot of other benefits if you kind of apply it throughout your life. So I’ll share a bit about like my own sort of habits, and then Brittany, I’ll kick it over to you and you can share about how you tend to prepare for things in your life. But for me, just the way that I am is that I will always tend to leave things until the last minute.

Brittany: Yep, I can relate to that.

Emma: That’s when I really get like a big burst of energy and I’m the most creative in the last minute. And sometimes I think it can kind of freak people out when they’re like, oh wow, you’re like just now putting this together. How does that work? And you know, it’s something that I’ve just kind of figured out about myself and for a while I would try to fight it and I would say, ok, I have this essay that’s due, like when I was in college, I have this essay that’s due in two months. I’m gonna break it into small parts and write one paragraph every day for, you know, X amount of weeks. And it just, the work that I would do was just not as good as the stuff that I would do in the last minute. So I kinda started to figure out, hey, I have a system that works for me, but I also don’t wanna get myself into a bad situation by, you know, not leaving enough time at the end to where I can only get half of the project done and then I get a bad grade. So I’ve definitely learned some lessons over the years on sort of how that works. But for me, part of being prepared is basically leaving extra time for myself in that kind of last minute area. So if I have something that I think is gonna take an hour and it’s due, you know, eight o’clock Monday morning, I’ll leave myself three hours on Friday afternoon to get it done. And it’s still kind of in that last minute, you know, last minute area. But I’m leaving myself more time than I think I need. So I think part of preparedness for me is kind of giving myself a little extra space and a little extra slack basically for in case things don’t go the way that I think they’ll go. But also a big part of that is making sure that, you know, if if someone asks you to get something done, that you get it done quickly. Because, you know, it’s one thing if I’m working on my own and I’ve got, you know, this project that I need to get done, but it’s another one when someone is waiting on me and I’m sort of the person that’s holding up the project. And I think a huge part of that is just being respectful of other people’s time. So that’s another thing that I’ve learned is to know, leave enough space in my day to where if someone that I work with needs something from me, I’m able to get to it. And then I’m not just like packing so many things in where I can never take anything else on. And it definitely goes into my, my personal life too as well, where it’s like, if I don’t prepare for a workout by eating enough food before and making sure that I’m fueled and ready and have had some water and you know, I’m ready to go move my body, if I don’t do that, I’m gonna have a, a terrible workout and it will be, you know, worse than if I just didn’t go at all. So, I think there are a lot of elements of our personal lives where, where preparedness can definitely play a role. So Brittany, I don’t know if you have any similarities or differences, but what does your like daily habit of preparedness look like for you?

Brittany: Yeah. Well, you brought up something I really liked, which is, you know, being respectful of other people’s time. And as a writer, one thing writers are infamously known for is like never doing things on time and missing deadlines. And part of that is because it’s really hard to write when, like, you’re not inspired when writing becomes a job. Yeah. It is much different and it’s like a whole different beast. For the most part. I set a rule for myself that I just don’t miss deadlines. There have been a couple times where I’ve had to push ’em, but it’s never been by a lot. So, that’s like my, my pretty big number one rule is just make your deadlines no matter how hard that is. And again, I haven’t done perfectly with that. But part of the reason I feel that way is I think, and not just with writing with other things, if you don’t prepare yourself, I don’t think you’re doing your very best. And you know, as somebody who really likes to, be involved in self-improvement and wanting to be my best self, I don’t think it’s fair to me to not be prepared. And that’s something that’s taken me a really long time to learn because I’m one of those people that in school could scrape by without like studying for tests for the most part. And then, you know, getting maybe not the best grade, but getting either a good grade or like a passing grade where I was like, all right, well I don’t, you know, I’m gonna keep getting away with this cuz I don’t have to study really hard. And I really bummed actually at that and how it set me up for failure. For example, I was very arrogant and I thought I knew everything as a college student and I thought I did not have to study for the LSAT. The LSAT is the test you have to take that gets you into law school or doesn’t get you into law school depending on your school. I was very arrogant about it. I was like, I don’t need to study. I’m so much smarter than everyone, you know, I’m just gonna, I’m not gonna prepare. Even though I had months to prepare and this happened two separate times, I did not learn my lesson. But the thing about the LSAT is it’s a very specific way of thinking and, it’s not really something you kind of have to learn and train your brain to think the way the LSAT wants you to think. And because I didn’t prepare, I did not get any of that Right. And so I did not get the worst score, but I didn’t get a great score. And again, I was irritated. I did like a teeny bit of studying the second time, but still not as much as I should have been doing. And so it was really eyeopening for me. And I always look back to this as a really good example of why you should be prepared cuz I sold myself short, you know? Yeah. I, disappointed myself because, and I don’t necessarily regret not going to law school. It would’ve been very expensive, but I, had so many, there’s so many opportunities that at that time I really wanted that I didn’t get to do all because I did not think I needed to be prepared and I didn’t prepare. So that, is huge lesson for me. And I think there’s been many times even at work where I’m like, and that goes back to respecting other people’s time. Where I should have been more prepared for something and wasn’t, and that only served to hurt myself, but also I can do better. Like, I deserve to treat myself better, right? Yes. And that’s, that’s what, being prepared does. So Yeah. I think this is, I think it’s so important. I think it’s so important to train yourself to make sure you know, that being prepared for every situation in your life is very important. Totally.

Emma: Totally, yeah. It’s, I think it’s so good too to have like habits and to know yourself too. Like are you someone who’s naturally prepared? Because I have close friends who are prepared for everything and they just, they could not fathom ever running, be ever running behind or like procrastinating or anything like that. I’m someone who is the complete opposite naturally. But I also think it, you know, it’s easy to sort of use that as a crutch and be like, well I’m just disorganized. I just run late or I just procrastinate. And, you know, everyone has weaknesses and challenges when it comes to these things, but that’s not necessarily an excuse because at the end of the day, we are all the boss of our own habits and our own lives and if we don’t figure things out, no one’s gonna come do it for us. So I think, you know, it’s important to know yourself but also to not just be like, well I accept every negative thing and I’m just never gonna change cuz it’s just who I am. Like we’re very much capable of change and of challenging ourselves and setting good habits. So that would be kind of my encouragement on the personal note. And then in the last couple minutes of the show, I wanna also talk about preparedness when it comes to like your family and emergencies and that sort of thing. Because right now with all of these, you know, just insane things going on in the world, we have people talking about food shortages because a lot of our grain comes from Russia and Ukraine and fertilizer shortages and like, you know, people are talking about World War II and all of this crazy stuff. It can be really easy to get freaked out about it and to just get honestly like scared. Like, what’s gonna happen? What am I going to do? And something that I have found really helps with that is thinking through logistically, you know, hey, let’s say our a storm knocked our power out for a couple of days, which, you know, we get hurricanes all the time, not hurricanes, tornadoes all the time where I live in Tennessee. And you know, it’s scary sometimes thinking, well, what would we do if we didn’t have power or if something bad happened? And rather than just sort of living in fear all the time, my husband and I have built up a supply of, you know, here’s some food that we could make to meet our nutrition needs if we didn’t have power. We’ve got some water, we’ve got some stuff to purify water if we need to. And it’s, you know, I think you can very easily get carried away with that to where you’re just kind of like, you know, building, a doomsday bunker, which I certainly don’t blame people for doing that. I totally get it. And my parents basically are doing that too right now. And I totally respect it and it’s awesome. But I think it can be easy to kind of get consumed with this idea of like, you know, everything’s gonna happen crazy and we all just need to be scared all the time. There’s a huge difference between being scared and being prepared. And I think having, having you know enough to meet your basic needs for a few days and think about, you know, if certain types of disasters were to happen in your area, what would you need and work with your family on saying, Hey, what do we need to do to be ready for that here? And I do think that a lot of people that listen to Tuttle Twins and read our books are, kind of on the same page with that. Where they tend to be a little more independent minded. And I know a lot of our readers are homesteaders, which I love. I would love to do that someday. but yeah, I think just a general attitude of preparedness and meeting your own needs is really powerful because if you have your family’s needs met and your base is covered, you’re not only, you know, able to get by without relying on others, but you also are able to show generosity and to care for your neighbors or your friends and family if that’s what you would like to do. So I think that’s super powerful. Brittany, I don’t know if you’re like into the emergency prepping stuff at all, but it’s definitely, yeah, it’s like its own whole subculture, but I’m super fascinated by that and I love like buying emergency supplies and that kinda thing. It’s fun for me.

Brittany: I should like it more. And I always feel like, okay, if I was married and like had a family, I’d be more into it, but I should be into it anyway. But my parents really are, and I grew up in a religion that emphasized that and it’s basically almost a commandment that we need to have like three months of supplies and things to get us through. Not even if an, if a disaster happens, but also like if you lose your job and you need to feed your family. And it’s just good to be prepared, but every year for Christmas my parents give us some sort of like survivalist, like prep.

Emma: I love it.

Brittany: So like we got generators this year, to in case, you know, power goes out. Nice.

Emma: That’s a good gift.

Brittany: Yeah, it actually is a really good gift. So it’s been, I really love that aspect of, of what my family do and their religion I was raised in. So I think, cause I think it’s really good to be prepared and you brought up a good point that you can help others. And you know, a big theme on this podcast is that we don’t want the government to have to do everything for us because one, yeah, it costs us money anyway and they’re not good at it. But think about it, like, if you are prepared, then you can help your own community, then you’re doing something where you don’t have to rely on the government. So yeah, I think being prepared is so important.

Emma: Yeah. It, really fits in with all of the values that we talk about on this show of, you know, taking care of yourself and not relying on the government and also showing generosity to others and not forcing other people to fix your problems for you. A huge part of that is, you know, having your own bases covered and having your own needs met. So I’m super passionate about this. It was fun to talk through sort of like the personal side and then the more like emergency side. But, we’ll wrap it up for here today, guys. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll talk to you all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.