No one expected the economy to crash during the Great Depression...until it did.

No one expected (or maybe they did but didn’t prepare) for a disease to put the entire world at a halt...until it did.

Stuff like this happens because no one expects things to be worse than the last big disaster. For the next pandemic, people will take what they learned from COVID in hopes to prepare better. Maybe they’ll put a few extra months on their emergency fund or ensure they have enough protective equipment to cover for a lack of supply for a few months.

But what if the next pandemic is worse? What happens if it’s so dangerous to where people can’t go in to work at all, even essential workers? This may seem dramatic, but it’s only because it hasn’t happened yet.

Prior to 1930, creating a plan for what would happen if banks ran out of money seemed dramatic. “Their banks! They can’t run out of money,” people thought...until they did.

Preparing for the disasters you can’t see is an idea I learned from Morgan Housel. He [writes](https://collabfund.com/blog/risk-is-what-you-dont-see/), “Paying attention to known risks is smart. But we should acknowledge that what [we] can’t see, aren’t talking about, and aren’t prepared for will likely be more consequential than all the known risks combined.”

If you’re only as prepared for the next pandemic, economic crash, or job loss to be as worse than the last disaster, you’re going to be unprepared.

Be prepared for the disaster to be worse than before

After the space shuttle **********Challenger********** exploded, Richard Feynman got a call asking to be apart of a committee to investigate the accident. When he heard the job would be in Washington, Feynman had an immediate hesitancy to accept the role. His biggest question was, "How am I going to get out of this?"

Luckily, though, he didn't make that decision on his own. He called on numerous colleagues and mentors for advice, but the one that was most helpful came from his dear wife:

> "Look” Feynman said, "Anybody could do it. They can get somebody else."

"No," said Gweneth. "If you don't do it, there will be twelve people, all in a group, going around from place to place together. But if you join the commission, there will be eleven people–all in a group, going around from place to place together–while the twelfth one runs around all over the place, checking all kinds of unusual things. There probably won't be anything, but if there is, you'll find it."

She said, "There isn't anyone else who can do that like you can."

“Being very immodest,” Feynamn said, “I believed her.”
>

Check all kinds of unusual things

Time is funny.

We can wither away a day, a month, or even a year in the present, and it will never punish us.

But it doesn’t reward us either. We can’t get “more time” by being diligent with our allotted hours. I love how Arnold Bennett put it in ***How to Live on 24 Hours a Day:***

> Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you.
> 

Another funny thing about time is that we can’t waste it in the future. With money, we punish our future selves with debt. With time, there is no such thing. Each day lies in wait, fresh and awaiting our plans for it, no matter what happened the day before. Whether the TV held our gaze all day or we solved world hunger, once the sun goes down, time forgives and forgets.

If you felt like yesterday was a waste, I have good news for you: today is a new day, and it couldn’t care less how you spent yesterday.

If you felt like yesterday was a success, I have good news for you as well: today is a new day, and it couldn’t care less how you spent yesterday. Time to do it over again.

When in doubt, remember what Michelangelo wrote to his apprentice:

> Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.
>

A few funny things about time

There’s a saying, “Done is better than perfect.” Some artists live by that phrase. Others criticize it. They think it gives people a hall pass to create shoddy work. But those people don’t know what they’re talking about (and their unaccomplished desire to create something meaningful also plagues them).

“Done is better than perfect” is the mindset for the first draft, not the final piece. It’s easier to edit something that already exists than to come up with something new.

Neil Gaiman encourages young writers to just get started, saying, “Anything you do can be fixed. What you can’t fix is the perfection of a blank page or the unsullied whiteness of a blank screen.”

Starting is important because unattempted greatness will always leave you feeling like the 45-year-old high school quarterback who missed their big break. Thing is, you haven’t missed yours yet.

In How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett warns: ”Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish [to do something great], the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul.”

Get something on the page.

‘Done is better than perfect’ isn’t the whole saying.

Just get something on the page

The life and wisdom of Albert Einstein was the result of his innate curiosity.

He had a willingness to ask questions about the strange mysteries in the world and see where finding answers lead him.

That curiosity was rooted in one thing: wonder.

This first time it happened, he was sick in bed as a kid when his father gave him a compass. He was fascinated with how the needle moved and was determined to understand how it worked. This was the spark–a simple act of wondering–that lead to a lifetime of revolutionary ideas.

The New York Times, reporting on Einstein’s death, wrote the most beautiful words that describe his approach to life:

Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad of stars and upon billowing ocean and tossing trees–and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about? The most thoughtful wonderer who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.

“The most thoughtful wonderer...”

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