Psychology Of Preparation: Why Professionals Skip What Matters Most

Forbes

16-05-2025

Roy Ward, President/CEO of PREGAME®.
During my two decades in medical device sales, I witnessed a stark reality that fundamentally changed my perspective on human behavior. Day after day, I observed patients receiving treatments for conditions that could have been mitigated, or even prevented entirely, with proper preparation and preventative care. Even more striking was how universal this pattern appeared, regardless of patients' education, income or awareness of risks.
I also realized this observation isn't limited to healthcare. When my company began researching athletic performance, we discovered that even elite athletes—professionals whose livelihoods depend entirely on their bodies—don't always have as many convenient options or time to spend on warmup protocols as they do on recovery and rehabilitation. In business, I see the same pattern. Companies often invest millions in crisis management while underinvesting in strategic preparation.
The paradox is clear: We consistently underinvest in preparation and a proactive mindset, despite overwhelming evidence of its importance.
I think understanding the psychology behind this tendency is the first step toward creating meaningful change, whether in healthcare, athletics or business leadership.
In athletics, research indicates that over 30% of injuries treated in sports medicine clinics are skeletal muscle injuries, many of which can be prevented through proper warmup and stretching routines. Yet, up to 24% of professional athletes retire due to injuries rather than age or performance decline. This highlights that in many cases, despite proper warmup routines administered by coaches and teams, there's still a psychological factor that's contributing to the gap in preparation.
This pattern mirrors what we see in business, too. Let's look at startups: CB Insights found that 35% of startups fail because they simply don't have product-market fit. They found that's the second biggest reason startups crash and burn. And the frustrating part? This kind of obstacle could be avoided with proper research and preparation up front. Yet so many founders rush ahead without taking the time to really understand who they're building for.
This repeated behavior across domains suggests deeper psychological factors at work. Factors we must understand to create lasting change.
We often prioritize immediate rewards over delayed benefits, a phenomenon psychologists call "temporal discounting." This made perfect evolutionary sense when immediate threats dominated our ancestors' lives, but it can create a significant barrier to preparation in modern contexts.
When an athlete faces the choice between jumping straight into performance (immediate gratification) or spending 20 minutes on a proper warmup (delayed benefit), they often naturally gravitate toward the immediate option. The same mechanism can affect business leaders who choose to address urgent emails rather than engage in strategic planning.
Perhaps the most insidious barrier to preparation is the invisibility of its benefits. When preparation works perfectly, the result often looks like "nothing happened." The athlete who doesn't get injured receives no celebration. The business initiative that unfolds smoothly generates no dramatic stories.
Contrast this with the visible, measurable outcomes of recovery or crisis management. The athlete who returns from injury gets praised for their comeback. The executive who saves a failing project becomes the hero. Our brains often struggle to attribute positive outcomes to preparation because the causal relationship is less obvious.
When you think about it, we've created a weird reward system here—a system where the heroes are the ones who swoop in and fix problems, not those who quietly prevent them from happening in the first place. Reactive measures get all the glory and recognition, while proactive work often goes completely unnoticed.
It's backwards, right? We're celebrating the more expensive, less efficient approach while ignoring the smarter, more cost-effective one.
Perhaps most surprising is how experience can often exacerbate rather than mitigate preparation avoidance. Past success can create a dangerous form of overconfidence. The executive who has successfully led projects thinks, "I know how to do this," just as the veteran athlete believes, "My body knows what to do." This can create a dangerous zone where skill meets complacency, and often with costly consequences.
Understanding these psychological barriers allows us to design more effective approaches to preparation. Rather than relying on willpower or awareness, we may need to redesign the preparation experience itself.
The key insight from my work with athletes is that preparation must become appealing rather than obligatory. That's why I'm focused on transforming warmup from a clinical, tedious requirement into an engaging, confidence-boosting experience that athletes actually want to do.
This approach translates directly to business settings. Forward-thinking organizations can build preparation into their cultures and encourage practices that trigger positive emotions rather than feelings of obligation. I've noticed some companies have created pre-project planning phases designed to make strategic thinking more appealing than reactive tasking.
So here's the challenge: What's the one area in your career or business where you know you should be preparing more, but aren't? Take a minute to identify it, then ask yourself which of these psychological barriers is holding you back. Is it the allure of immediate rewards? The invisible benefits? Or maybe past success has made you overconfident?
Rather than relying solely on willpower, consider how you might redesign your approach. How could you transform preparation from a draining obligation into something that actually energizes and motivates you?
I think the future belongs to those who prepare for it effectively—not just because preparation is logically sound, but because it unleashes a competitive advantage and significant confidence that can enable you to hit your peak performance.
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