Getting prepared isn’t a one-time thing. Some would say it is a lifestyle, a commitment to a way of life. But new and seasoned preppers should understand the benefits of setting goals for their preparedness. The start of a new year is the perfect time to set prep goals for yourself and your family. Whether it’s planning to start that garden in the Spring, adding to your food storage, testing your bug out bag, evaluating the natural disasters that have happened in your area or adding to your survival skills, you should be purposeful about moving into the new year!
Why is Goal Setting Important?
Goals are essential for living a purposeful life. Having clear and well-defined short and long term objectives and plans, provides direction, focus and purpose. It increases motivation to take action and encourages moving your preparedness forward in ways that won’t overwhelm you.
Setting goals also gives us a plan to work from, allowing us to make progress on the most important areas of our preparedness without spending time on activities that won’t truly benefit us or our loved ones. They help us to measure progress, as they provide tangible evidence of progress and growth. Having goals is key to being better prepared.
Why do Most Prep Goals Fail?
Most goal setting plans fail because of a lack of proper planning and execution. People often set goals that are too ambitious, and may lack the skills or resources to achieve them. Additionally, there may not be enough flexibility in the goals to account for unforeseen events. Without sufficient clarity and specificity in the goals, preppers may have difficulty focusing on the most impactful tasks. Lastly, if the goals are not realistic, they will be difficult to achieve.
How Should You Set Up Your Prepper Goals?
There are many ways and systems people have used over the years to set goals. In this post, I would like to share the P.R.E.P. system. PREP stands for Purposeful, Realistic, Evaluative and Producing. We will look at each of these areas individually.
PREP to Be Purposeful for You and Your Family
One of the mistakes that every newbie prepper makes is they don’t know where to start prep planning. As a result, they make plans or purchases based on prepper articles, podcasts or YouTube channels. Although these resources can give some really great ideas for your preps, they might not be purposeful for you and your family!
To truly set objectives that are purposeful for you, you will need to spend some time to figure out what is necessary and important for your situation. Here are some big questions to ask yourself to keep you focused on your upcoming year.
Economy
- What is the economy like for my family right now?
- Can I afford to live in this area?
- Will I be able to afford the rent or mortgage payments, as well as other expenses such as groceries, utilities, and transportation in the next year?
- What is the job market like in this area?
- Are there job opportunities in my field or might I lose my job?
- What does my emergency fund look like?
- How can I save more money?
Safety and Quality of Life
- What is the quality of the schools in this area?
- What is the crime rate in this area?
- Is the area generally safe, or are there high rates of crime or other safety concerns?
- What is the local climate like? Do you prefer warm or cool weather, and does the area offer the type of climate that you prefer?
- Are there parks, shopping centers, restaurants, and other amenities nearby that you enjoy or that may be important to you?
- Am I close to family and friends that I can lean on if times got bad?
- What natural disasters should I prepare for?
- Are the local first responders respected and funded by the city/county/state?
- What has been the historical response to disasters for this area in the past?
- What is the response to self-defense in my area?
General Preparedness
- How much water do I have on hand?
- How many days of food storage do I have?
- What do I have in terms of medical supplies?
- How would I defend myself from an attacker/robber?
- Would I bug-in or bug-out?
- What would cause me to bug-out?
- Where would I go if I had to leave my house?
- What are my power needs?
Although we all like the flashy, “tactical” gear that we see all-over the prepper-universe, it is more important to take steps to prep for what can really get you better prepared. Do you really need another knife? Ok, don’t answer that one.
PREP and Be Realistic with What You Prepare For!
One of the things that I have noticed and talk about ALOT on the podcast and articles, is the fact that most preppers like the sensational topics of prepping. For example, when I owned Prepper Website or when I link to an article in the Sat. Prep about EMPs or Bugging Out, I know those articles are going to get a lot of clicks. In reality, Preppers should be clicking on articles like, “Do This with $100 Now” or “5 Ways to Reset Your Prep Readiness.”
Here is an important wake-up call – You Won’t Be Prepared for an EMP! The EMP Commission predicted that 90% of the population of the United States would die in the first year after an EMP. Yes, you can have a one year supply of food and water, but the world would devolve really quickly after an EMP. There is no way you can prepare for that kind of world! This is “real prepper talk.”
Mr. Baker. That’s my understanding. Even though you don’t
get direct effects on biological, humans–the long-term term
effects without the electric power grid, we’re talking about
certainly within a year, you would lose at least half the
American population. I have seen estimates as high as 90
percent of the American population would be at risk over a
projected 1-year period.NOTE – Click the link below, use CTRL + F in your browser to search for 90 to find the quote above.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg96952/html/CHRG-114hhrg96952.htm
What is realistic is preparing for a hurricane if you live on the coast. Or, adding to your food storage stockpile to save money in the long term since costs are going up. Starting a budget and adding to your emergency fund is something that is very beneficial too, but most won’t think it is a cool prepper activity.
PREP and Evaluate Your Progress!
Imagine working towards a goal, taking valuable time and spending your money, then realizing that you haven’t made any real progress. This can happen when you don’t evaluate your progress! There are some great advantages to taking the time to evaluate your PREP progress.
One advantage is that you can identify where you are being successful. We prepare because we know our world is fragile. Prepping is important and can, at times, be a life or death situation. For example, if you need to get into your long term food storage, you want your food to be edible and not full with pests. So, it is important to be successful in our preparations.
Another important reason to evaluate your preps is to identify what is not working. You might have a goal of rotating your food storage using the first in, first out (FIFO) method. But if you never evaluate your canned food storage, you might not realize that your family members are pulling cans from the wrong place and leaving the oldest cans on the shelves. Taking the time to do a quick evaluation of your canned food will help you talk to your family members and adjust their actions.
And lastly, taking the time to evaluate your progress will help you stay motivated as you see real results. This leads us to the final step in PREP.
PREP and Produce a Better Future for Yourself and Your Family
When you prep, you are investing in a better future for you and your family. You are taking a possible unpleasant situation and making it better or less uncomfortable. This part is hard for newer preppers because they might not have experienced a hard or uncomfortable time before. But seasoned preppers can also feel like their preparedness is all for nothing as they have been prepping for long periods of time, at the same time, hearing all the sensational “end of the world” scenarios that should have ended life as we know it.
I would suggest that prepping is like insurance. You hope to never use it. But if you have to, you sure are glad you have it!
I would also suggest that we are entering a very different world. It doesn’t take a lot of poking around the internet to access alternative news sources and to hear about all the craziness in the word. Even if there is war “over-there,” the actions and consequences have reaching affects to our country, politics, supply chains, etc…
Getting prepared takes a present-future mindset. You are prepping now, but it will pay off in the future. It is not about buying some cool gear, going camping or surviving in the woods when the Russians invade. It is common-sense, the thing of people who see the times they are living in and don’t want to rely on the government or some other entity to come through for them!
More Tips to Help Your Achieve Your PREP Goals
Get an Accountability Partner
Having an accountability partner in preparedness is invaluable. The best partner would be your spouse, but the reality is that most people who prep are solo preppers. The other side to this is that preppers are very quiet about their preps and don’t talk openly about what they are doing to get better prepared. But finding someone to partner with will require getting out of your comfort zone and developing a relationship with others that you can trust. It can even be online. I’ve seen this happen in the Exclusive Email group. We share through email, but there is a group that gets on Zoom every other Tuesday night. It seems to be the same people. Some turn on their mic and camera and others just listen or type with their cameras off. But meeting together on a regular basis allows us to get to know each other and ask questions and help each other out.
If you stumble, don’t quit, just start it back up.
Have you ever known someone that has blown one of their goals and just stopped moving forward because they feel they failed. This happens all the time! Don’t let one setback keep you from moving forward to produce a better future for yourself and your family. If you find yourself in the middle of a setback, just adjust and pick your prep goals back up! Remember, your preps are bigger than a setback. Your family and their future depends on it!
Be flexible and open to adjusting if you have to.
Lastly, be flexible. Everything that is worth doing will require adjustments and work. As you learn more about emergency preparedness, you will realize that the goals you had starting out might not work as well as you thought. Being able to adjust is the sign of a mature prepper.
To Your PREP Future!
In conclusion, being prepared is a continuous process that requires commitment. Setting goals for preparedness is an important aspect of this process, and the start of a new year is the perfect time to do so. By being purposeful about moving into the new year with PREP goals in mind, you can ensure that you and your family are well-prepared for any potential challenges that may come your way.
