The Go Bag Principle

I just got back from a hunting trip with my family, and this afternoon I leave for Dallas–Fort Worth. Those two trips have almost nothing in common except the way I get out the door, which is the same way every time.

The idea comes from the survival world, where people keep a go bag: one bag holding everything you would need in an emergency. Some people call it a bug-out bag. The contents do not come in and out. They sit there, ready. When something happens, you do not assemble anything. You grab the bag and go.

What I like about it has nothing to do with emergencies. It is that a go bag turns a hundred things to remember into one.

What I used to do

For years, every hunt started the same way. I would think about where I was going and what I was doing, build a long checklist, and then walk around the house collecting gear from wherever it had ended up. Ammunition, gloves, camping equipment, everything for cleaning and butchering. There are a hundred things you might want on a hunt, and they lived in a dozen places.

Then, once I was out there, I would spend the trip digging through the car, through backpacks, through crates, looking for the one thing I needed right now.

I got fed up with that one season.

Crates, labeled, packed by job

I went to Home Depot and bought a stack of those black tubs with the yellow lids, several large and several half-size. Then I got out my label maker.

Everything went into a crate by category, and every crate got a label on the side I could read at a glance. Now, when a trip comes up, I grab the crates that apply. Sometimes I split them by what I am hunting, deer or turkey or bear.

The thing that made it work was packing by job rather than by trip:

• A butchering crate: nitrile gloves, gallon bags, garbage bags.
• A crate for harnesses, seat cushions, and bow holders for the tree.
• And so on, however your own work divides.

Packing by job means I am never rebuilding a kit. The kit already exists. A trip is just a question of which kits come along.

The crates live in the garage, organized in advance. Leaving means grabbing a couple of things instead of thinking about a hundred.

The bag that never gets unpacked

Travel works the same way. I carry a Nomatic backpack, which I use day to day, and everything I need for work is already in it: iPad, computer, chargers, cables, adapters.

Inside it is a pouch, so those things are not floating loose among everything else. The pouch holds my laptop charger, the HDMI adapter, the USB adapter, and the cables I actually use. I do not pack it. It is packed.

There is also a small charger in there that handles my phone, my watch, and my AirPods at once. Here is the part that matters: I bought it specifically for travel. It is not the one from my dresser that I would have to remember to go get. It lives in the backpack and it does not come out. If I ever had to lend it to someone, it would go straight back.

That is the rule that makes the whole thing work. Nothing lives outside the bag. The moment you start borrowing from your own kit, the kit stops being ready, and you are back to remembering.

Toiletries get the same treatment: a bag with its own toothbrush and its own everything, kept for traveling, rather than the one I use every morning and would have to pack at the last minute.

What is left to remember

So today, before I head to O’Hare, here is the entire list: clothes in a suitcase, toiletries bag, backpack, go.

That is the payoff. Not that I own more gear, but that I can be calm on the way out the door, because the thinking was done weeks ago, when I was not in a hurry. I rarely forget anything now, and when I do, it is something that was never in a kit to begin with.

Why this is more than a packing tip

The gear is the fun part. The principle underneath it is the one worth keeping.

Being ready is a design problem, not a character problem. When you pre-organize, you remove thought, memory, and willpower from the moment you need them least, which is the moment you are rushed, tired, or stressed. You are not relying on being sharp at five in the morning. You are relying on a decision you made once, calmly, in the garage.

That is the same argument I made about changing the situation instead of trying harder, and about work that doesn’t depend on heroics. Put things into processes. Organize them so they do not need you to be at your best. Then aim the whole arrangement at the things you actually care about, your long-term goals and your values, so that getting there is efficient rather than heroic.

That is a good part of what being squared away means: your things in the right place, ready when you need them, asking nothing of you in the moment.

Square it away

Pick one trip you take often. A hunt, a work trip, a weekend at the in-laws’, practice on Saturday mornings.

Pack one container for it this week, by job rather than by occasion. Label it. Then leave it packed, and buy the cheap duplicate of whatever you were planning to borrow from yourself.