Why Prepping is Hard (and How to Make it Easier)

No one who decides to start prepping thinks it will be an easy feat.

Prepping isn’t something you do because it’s a quick and easy win. If it was, I’d argue that a lot more people would be doing it.

Prepping is hard. I’ve said it time and time again, and I’m not anywhere done saying it yet.

There are so many excuses a person can come up with for not taking prepping seriously – so many “reasons” not to prep.

But when the chips are down, you can chalk all those reasons down to one simple umbrella statement: prepping is hard.

Why Prepping Is Hard

Why it’s so hard to be serious about prepping is up for debate, but in my opinion, two simple factors make prepping as hard as it is:

• Prepping encompasses a lot of different topics (outdoor skills, first aid, personal finance, self-sufficiency, etc.), and
• We’re limited. Limited by a lack of time time, energy, funds, ability to concentrate, and a slew of other things.

While, for me, it’s easy to pinpoint why prepping is so hard, it’s another story taking this knowledge of the difficult aspects of prepping to turn them on their head and try to make prepping easier.

See it’s not like acknowledging that prepping encompasses a heck of a lot of different topics helps us to be able to gain experience or knowledge in those different fields.

Similarly, acknowledging the fact that we’re limited doesn’t help make us any less limited. We still have budgets, time constraints, energy drains, and all that other annoying stuff to worry about, no matter the fact that we understand these limitations are actively working toward making prepping harder.

So how can we make prepping easier? Is it even possible? Well, I’d argue that it is.

How to Make Prepping Easier

These are not shortcuts to becoming a successful prepper. Realistically, unless you win the lottery – are awarded with a heck of a lot of cash, use that money to build up a stockpile, get to quit your day job and use the extra time to devote yourself fully to learning new things about prepping – sad to say there really aren’t any shortcuts.

These are not tips that will make prepping so easy that your neighbour, who’s been prepper shaming you for “wasting” all your hard earned money and all the extra free time you’ve got, will now change her mind about the whole damn thing and want to join you in prepping.

These methods of making prepping easier don’t take away the fact that you have to see value in prepping and really have the motivation to try to become a better prepper/survivalist in order to succed.

And these methods definitely don’t take away from the fact that preparedness is a lifestyle, and not simply something that can be “completed” ever, only something that you will be able to improve upon more and more as time, energy, effort, and funds are poured into your prepper projects.

Now that that’s out of the way, what are these methods of making prepping easier?

Here are my ideas;

1. Teach yourself the things you’re most interested and passionate about first.

It helps you to keep momentum. Trying to get Thomas to learn about starting a prepper garden would be like pulling a tooth. Encouraging him to look at gear that could make prepping easier – now that’s something he’d jump on doing, even during his downtime.

There are so many different aspects to prepping that it really should be easy to find at least one that you’d be fascinated in starting to learn about first. Don’t try forcing yourself to start prepping by doing the “hard stuff” before the “easy stuff.” Start with those things that come naturally to you, and feel more fun, and prepping will become much easier to do.

2. If you’re prepping in a group, divide up tasks.

Sort of in line with the last example – Thomas is the gear guy between the two of us. I don’t need to worry about researching gear because if I did it and he did it, we’d, in my opinion, be wasting our efforts on both doing the same task.

I’m into gardening and he hates it – clear who’s going to be doing what there. And since he knows so much about first aid, he’ll continue to learn more about it and be able to teach me what’s important for me to know along the way.

Dividing up tasks if you’re prepping in a group is an absolutely wonderful way to cover more ground, get more done, and not get burned out as easily. Each person has their own unique interests and excels at different things – divvy up the responsibilities based on that and you’ll be feeling your preps are doing a lot smoother sailing.

3. Start with easy preps.

Again along similar lines, start with prepping what’s easiest for you to do first. Not only do I mean this in terms of starting with what you find more fun and interesting, as I said in point #1 before, but if there’s a prep you can quickly knock out of the way – do it! You’ll gain momentum from the little wins, as it’s encouraging to see a large amount of progress made over a short amount of time and with minimal energy and funds. The little wins will help you to keep going, and will make prepping feel a lot easier than if you’re working on huge, difficult projects to start with.

If you’re not a beginner, try doing some easier or more fun preps alongside the hard ones. If you’re working on a single large, difficult prepper project that’s pretty draining, doing more quick, short, and fun tasks simultaneously can really help take the bite out of the frustration you might feel for having to work on such a huge, daunting prepper project where you won’t be seeing results quickly.

4. Find a group of people who will encourage you and help congratulate you on your success at prepping.

Prepping is so much harder to do alone than it is in a group, but if no one around you is interested in prepping and sees the value in it, it can be difficult to reap the benefits from prepping in a group.

Your group doesn’t have to be large, but if you find even one or two people who can encourage you and help to congratulate you on your successes, help teach you new things and spur you on to continue progressing with regards to your preps, it can be an enormous boon to your motivation and can make prepping feel one heck of a lot easier.

If you don’t know any of these types of people yet – don’t stress. You’re online, and that means you’re open to a world of possibilities when it comes to finding the right people to help you on your journey toward becoming a better prepper. Find the kind of community you’d like to be a part of (shameless plug – you can always start off your search on our community forum, Survival Threads), introduce yourself to the already formed group, start sharing your knowledge and success stories, and in no time I’m sure you’ll find that you’ve formed a group of cheerleaders around you who can help you when you’re down and be sincerely happy for your success when you’ve accomplished your goals with regards to prepping.

A good group will help the good times feel even better and will make the hard times a lot easier to weather.

5. When you first start prepping, start by investing in cheaper products.

Don’t break the bank – not ever. There are a lot of affordable ways to go about prepping, from buying cheap and affordable priced survival gear, to stockpiling for free or next to nothing – hell there are many ways to even build up your gear and household goods stockpile or food stockpile frugally. When you’re on a budget, don’t dip into your emergency funds in order to prep. Those emergency savings are an important prep in themselves and indubitably will prove to be quite valuable one day. Stick to buying cheaper gear until you’ve got your basic ground covered when it comes to prepping.

Once your basic preps are covered, you can begin to replace the cheaper products you bought with higher quality items as time goes buy. If you even need to that is. If your $15 Mora Companion is working out for you (which it should be; Moras are excellent pieces of kit albeit the low price tag), don’t bother to upgrade. Replace your cheaper survival gear with more expensive survival gear down the road, as you have more funds to work with and, like I keep saying, after you’ve covered all your bases with cheap gear first. That way, you won’t be stressing out over money, and stockpiling survival gear will feel a lot easier than if you were to have to splurge on the more expensive gear first. You’ll also cover many more bases this way, as saving up for one very expensive piece of kit will prevent you from getting other gear that might come in handy even thought it might not last you forever or be the kind of gear you’ll keep for an eternity.

There are so many reasons to prep, though even if you know all the great perks to prepping, that doesn’t make prepping any easier. These tips, however, I think will really help to make prepping feel a lot less like a chore that needs to get done, and a lot more like the completely doable lifestyle choice that it is.

It’s not impossible to be a prepper, it’s just hard. And if you can make the hard a little less hard, there’s absolutely no harm in that.

Make prepping a little easier and you’re likely to have a lot more success as a prepper. Learning and growing as a survivalist doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sometimes looks!

What About You?

Do you find prepping hard? Can you think of any more ways to make prepping easier?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.