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With all the different disasters and emergency situations we could possible face, the process of preparing can be a little overwhelming at times and intimidating to say the least. It seems that even when we are more prepared than we ever have been, we still have the feeling that it’s just not enough.

I titled this week’s podcast “ Prepping Challenges, Distractions and how to…Squirrel!” because sometimes it can be really easy have our preparedness plans derailed or go down a rabbit hole that leads us nowhere.

Lisa and I talked about some of these distractions and how we can try to keep ourselves on track and not get burnt out with prepping. The last thing we want to do is to stop making progress towards our goal or goals.

At the end of this post we also have some interesting (and probably common) answers we got when we posed the question “what is your biggest challenges and/or distractions?” to the Apoco-List Facebook group.

Lack of resources

I made this number one on the list because it is probably number one on just about everyone’s list. With all the supplies we “need” to buy to become more prepared it seems like we can never have enough money.

I have written a couple of posts on this in the past including reducing your debt and budgeting that includes a free excel budget planner, and one that goes into how to earn extra money for prepping.

We might not be able to control how much the price of gas is, but spending money in the wrong areas of preparedness and not budgeting our money are both things we can control.

Outside Influences & Second Guessing

Unfortunately when it comes to how others react to our prepping there is not much we can do about it, sometimes it just takes patience mixed with a little wishful thinking. I do have an article about how to get your loved ones on board, and I also have one about how to read people which will be helpful now as well as in a SHTF situation.

Because of people telling us we are overreacting we can sometimes second guess ourselves, it’s ultimately up to you what you choose to do, but I would rather be safe than sorry.

Organization & Overwhelm

Prepping is just like everything else in life, take tools for example, over time we start to build up a supply and if we don’t keep them organized it becomes very frustrating and we forget what we actually have.

This can lead us to throwing our Hands up in the air because we are frustrated and overwhelmed by how much stuff we have.

News Media (Alternative & Mainstream)

I’m probably preaching to the choir here but the news doesn’t report the real news anymore, they report what they are told to report.

It doesn’t matter if you watch Fox News or CNN, everyone has their own agenda and for the most part they are telling us what to believe and what’s important. Make up your own mind, and do the research to find out the real or whole story.

Television

Every once in a while it’s nice to just turn off our brain for a little while, but we need to be careful how often we do it. It’s really easy to get sucked in by these shows and the more we do it the more it becomes habit.

Set aside a certain amount of time each day to work on preparedness. This can be learning, reading and even watching videos, it doesn’t always have to cost us money.

Creating Subconscious Distractions

I am a professional at avoiding what I should be doing, I can always find something that needs to be done that takes me away from what I need to be doing. It’s usually what I call “busy work”, just work that keeps me busy and distracted from my main goal.

This usually happens without you consciously knowing it’s happening and you can go the whole day until you realize that you just tricked yourself.

Procrastination