get ahead of the game

1. To become prepared for or begin work on something ahead of schedule. My term paper isn't due until next week, but I want to get ahead of the game and finish it tonight. For once, we got ahead of the game and hung our Christmas decorations up right after Thanksgiving. You have all these boxes of files to go through before the merger, and I suggest you start now, to get ahead of the game.

2. To gain an advantage by learning something before other people do. It's hard to get ahead of the game in network security when the landscape of cyber threats is constantly changing. She's just an intern—how would she get ahead of the game with trade information? A: "When you're an admin in the C-suite, you hear a lot of things that allow you to get ahead of the game." B: "OK, so are layoffs coming or not?"