In the spirit of Minimum Effective Dose comes Incremental Change Over Time. Large disruptive changes are often non-permanent and the outcome is unpredictable. The large change is an anomaly and reversion to the norm is often observed. Changes necessary cannot be maintained and are often resisted. Big changes very rarely can be put in place suddenly. Those that can come at extreme cost and are often rife with unintended consequences and side-effects with no ability to mitigate or control either. A better tactic is to bump the mean line with frequent, consistent, but small stresses and adjustments. These changes are more robust and often greater than a large sudden change. In the short term this is not satisfying. Actually better though, yes.
One can apply this widely to many facets of life.
Do not begin preparing for disruptions in food supply, ammunition, fuel, housing, etc, by running out to a large well supplied retailer and dropping several thousand dollars on preparatory items, then tossing these items in your basement not thinking about them again thinking you are prepared. Don’t think buying this one thing will save you. Berkey Filter, baofeng radio, body armor, DD AR15, 10K rounds of 5.56mm, moat around your property, land mines, whatever. Worse, thinking you will be able to maintain this kind of expenditure and effort continuously is a pure setup for failure. A better option is accumulating lasting useful goods as you understand their utility, knowledge, and habits over time. Buy a box of ammunition in a caliber you actually own (ideally and use) each time you go somewhere ammo is sold. Or, have a standard procedure that 500 rounds is zero rounds, so you are looking to do another 1k round bulk purchase when your stock of a given caliber reaches 750. From there, you actually do these things. You don’t know what you don’t know. By accumulating you learn along the way, likely make fewer and smaller mistakes, figure out what you actually need, and expand your comfort zone. Doing things that make your everyday life are easier and better are the first to tackle. There are certain high consequence, low probability events one should prepare for. Those must be determined by the individual understanding what is occuring in their location, at their time, in their situation. Set up contingency plans so if things go extra sideways you know what to get if gear is needed and what to do next. This all needs to become normal to you so as times change you can adapt to them, such that they are normal. Do not live on the edge of survivability but instead on the other side of the spectrum in the zone of proximal development.
Do not start a fitness program with “I am going to run 3 miles every day and start eating right”. Likely you will quit within 2 weeks. Especially if you cannot actually complete the task so each attempt feels as a failure. You’ll hate your new diet and cheat frequently or maybe entirely. There will be constant excuses about how today is different, or you’ll start tomorrow or next week. Better is to evaluate your current capability on the first day, then recover from that stimulus wisely, but not too long, and next time add a defined amount. Another 100 yards. Or, same heart rate same time and let the distance be variable. Or, same distance same heart rate and watch the time come down. On food it’s about learning what is better than what you’re doing now and swapping or stopping one thing at a time. It’s building habits such that the change becomes normal and you’re ready to make another small change. These changes can happen automatically often as long as you’re consistent once you’ve decided to start moving in a particular direction.
Consistency is key. Effort will be required. However, the dose, the stimulus is small enough that it’s not a massive imposition to do so. Even better if the thing is something small enough that it feels like simply being lazy or silly not to.
Adaptation or acclimation is the feature we’re utilizing. I can acclimate to being able to lift 405 pounds, a year ago I couldn’t do that. No amount of “every day I’m going to attack this bar” would get me able to lift 405 if it was always 405. Recognize the power of this. It is possible to do something impossible by approaching it incrementally multiple times a week consistently for a long period of time. I did not learn everything I know about gunfighting in a single training course, or even a series of them. I learned and instilled it incrementally over time, 50 rounds a month over the course of years.
Do not take too small of bites and tell yourself you’re doing something. While better than nothing, it is necessary to use an effective dose. But the dose must be manageable and itself as non-toxic as possible. Do not over-dose and wipe yourself out such that you cannot participate in the next training event. Do not take yourself to the land of diminishing returns repeatedly. A motivator is to commit to some kind of event or outside evaluation such that you must keep on target and on track over time. Make it so that you do not have an unlimited time horizon, but you still have time to adapt to your upcoming test & stimulus properly. For fitness type things I like Spartan Races. Some like to use competition shooting. Others might have a Mil-Sim event. Maybe a camping trip or survival course. Lots of things, just something you commit to that must be done (like buy the tickets months in advance).
People want to make big changes suddenly, often in a panic, to improve their situation at the acute moment that something goes wrong or is about to. The time to actually be able to handle or prevent that event was to start a year ago or more. So, there’s the key to this piece: buy a little bit of ammo each time you can or a little extra or the prescribed amount at the prescribed time, follow your own rules, start now not tomorrow, have a plan or program and do it. Make it manageable so you actually will and can. It doesn’t need to be perfect, maybe it even shouldn’t. Compliance & consistency is more important than perfection. You don’t even need to do the thing well, do the thing as best as you can, and keep at it.