Fix The Roof When The Sun Is Shining: Define Your Words Edition

There’s an expression, “Fix the roof when the sun’s shining.” 

It basically means you don’t want to be trying to fix a roof in the middle of a storm when it’s a lot harder and a lot more dire. 

The expression gets tossed around a lot, usually when somebody or some entity is in crisis mode and a critic says, “They should have fixed the roof when the sun was shining.” 

It doesn’t make the expression less useful, but it does make defining “when the sun is shining” really important. 

The storm is pretty easy to see. But rarely is life so quiet, calm, and obviously begging for us to do a hard thing we don’t really want to do on such a nice and sunny day. 

If you don’t want to fix a roof during a thunderstorm, start by defining your non-storm conditions, as well as the roof you’ll need to protect your house. 

“Fix the roof when the sun is shining,” isn’t helpful retroactively. It can be useful when planning for the future.