When I talk about mitigating costly human errors with designer policies, so often in my life, I have made mistakes that have been, luckily, not costly to the tune of thousands of dollars, but certainly hundreds of dollars, mostly things like not moving my vehicle according to a posted sign about towing certain during certain hours.
So I don't know how many car tows I've had in my life.
Certainly that's been more costly than parking tickets, because I've done pretty well to avoid getting tickets.
Although I have had my fair share, I just didn't let them snowball and I would take care of them.
For a lot of us who aren't in high stakes professions where we have a lot of other people's money at stake, it would really be small number costs to cover mistakes that we're responsible for most of the time.
Whatever that could be in our private personal lives, whether it's leisure time or work time.
What do we do to mitigate those? We always say things like, it'll never happen again or not on my watch.
But you think you learn your lesson, you learn it better the more painful it is, more costly it is, hopefully.
They've done studies, of course, on whether negative experiences are more memorable than positive ones.
I would say, well, everyone's different, definitely. There are errors, mistakes that I've made that I will hopefully never forget.
In this highly modern world, we’re always at risk of scratching someone else's paint job or denting someone else's vehicle just by going by it, whether on foot or in a vehicle or in any other manner.
That's the expectation of total, pristine perfection of all of our manufactured items and possessions that tends to lend everything to a potential, attack surface by accident.
So it's a very egg shell walking, delicate reality that we're in, even if we're not in a high stakes profession of some kind, or a high stakes hobby or or leisure activity, where maybe you make a mistake and you end up hospitalized or dead or sick.
So the idea of designing policies at whatever scale for whatever the task or process is, once having learned of the potential of a blind spot if you will that you address that immediately in some sort of habituated workflow that says oh that mistake just happened it either did cost money or it could have costed money or could have caused other kinds of harm.
What I'm gonna do in response is immediately take some kind of note on some device, or in some manner so that I don't just get distracted and then forget about it.
But then there is a pending action item in some queue of action items.
However, you design that funnel for yourself. I tend to send myself an email because I know that if it's in my inbox, it will get addressed, because I go for the inbox zero lifestyle.
It's even dangerous to create folders, oh, this is the folder of things to do, and then it's out of sight, out of mind, and then those things don't get done.
If you have email folders and whatnot, even a separate notepad, I'll tend to just not necessarily be looking at it everyday, but email, you pretty much have to stay aware on a daily basis multiple times a day.
It's really a blessing the way that that works to be able to have that nowhere to hide from, kind of inbox funnel.
I certainly use sub folders with filters for things that aren't critical or things that I'm not worried about them getting lost in a stack of negligence after a few days of not checking or whatnot.
But that's what works for me to say, okay, something just happened. I cannot let this happen again. Not on my watch. Never again.
So I'm sending myself a note to create whatever it is, a calendar event, an alarm clock, a series of alarm clocks leading up to an important event, or whatever the sort of core concept is of how to address and prevent that problem in the future.
From now on, when X occurs, Y has to happen in response in order to prevent Z, which could be a negative outcome, or, however you wanna phrase it.
But there are so many rules in the external world, but probably not enough very well designed rules within our own behavior, within our own habits and workflow.
It's not enough for me, at least to just say, oh, I will endeavor to, I will intend to. Not having a system in place, some system, and that could be a very physical system...
It could be something where there is a physical representation almost a checklist where you cannot get beyond a certain point without having done a certain task. You don't have to be macgyver or somebody who's a very sophisticated or talented engineer.
A lot of people lose or misplace keys, wallets, phones. It slipped by me the other day as a matter of fact, I will give an example of when I did, for the first time in a very long time, leave my phone in a position where I hadn't intended to leave it.
That would just never happen because the way I normally keep it in an industrial scale, protective, multi layered case, and it's very rarely taken out of the outer layer.
If it is, for some reason, it may be because it's being charged in a certain place where I need to get up and walk away from it or something.
So what I decided to do in response to having set it in a place where I wanted to have closer access to it and I said, oh I need to have some means to know when it's not on my person charging which it would normally be tethered with paracord so that the keys wallet phone ritual for me is just tug on the cords.
Because everything is secured by paracord on a separate strand, and carabiner.
But that can be deceptive if you've taken your phone out of the outer shell.
So I decided what I'll do is I will grasp that outer shell anytime that phone is not in it, within reason, of course, but to know that I will not then leave my phone unattended at any scale at any range.
That is something I do not want to do at any scale, at any range, whether it's feet or miles or just out of my line of sight.
Another mechanism that's useful, and that I definitely think is worthwhile, whether it's listening to shows or listening to some kind of music, music is probably more sustainable to just have be a constant habit, a constant policy where I realize, if I wanna never lose my phone, I don't need any sophisticated GPS based beacon system to notify me if the phone is out of range.
All I need is just to have a Bluetooth in that's playing music, certainly at times where I might be worried about being separated from my phone for any reason, and then as long as I'm paying attention, which is should be pretty noticeable if I have music or I'm listening to something. And then all of a sudden the signal cuts out.
Obviously, I have gone out of that Bluetooth range, or the phone has been stolen or accidentally misplaced, or whatever.
And that is a mechanism, a policy to say, maybe it's not for every situation, but I'm definitely putting that on my list of policies to say, if ever I'm in a situation where I need to be extra concerned about my phone walking away or me walking away from my phone.
As long as I'm tethered to that range of that signal, if it cuts out, I know to respond accordingly.
So no matter what, as long as I'm holding for that time, then it's very unlikely that I will space out and be distracted and forget and think, oh, it's it's in my pocket when it's not.
Those are just two examples of all kinds of different physical means.
Also, you have the ability to create calendar events.
Oh, I missed the deadline to pay this bill, and now I'm paying a fine, extra fee.
So maybe don't just schedule the day to pay it on the day it's due, but give a couple of reminders ahead of time.
I will often do that, give myself at least two if it's important.
I'll give myself two calendar reminders, one leading up and one around the time of just to get prepared.
So I'm not caught off guard when a meeting has to happen online or something like that.
That has helped me, and that would be a costly mistake if an opportunity was lost or damage was done to the trust of a relationship, whether personal or professional, by being late.
So that is one costly human error of being late that a lot of us definitely can work on.
And I tend to pride myself on being very punctual, there's a whole list of things to improve that aspect of life.
For me, certainly it's been about trying to overestimate the amount of time it's gonna take to get ready to do anything, to prepare in advance and really pack things and test things and drill things, so you have more of an understanding of the scope. I hate rushing.
When you rush, you make mistakes, a lot more of them, and they can be dangerous and certainly very costly.
They tend to stack up. Once you get on a roll of making mistakes, it just gets worse and worse, the more distraught you become over the state of affairs.
So I definitely recommend preventative designer policy making to prevent costly human errors.
There are more general things, just changing habits around punctuality and being prepacked and really thinking through. There's plenty of time, no matter how busy you are in those private moments, waking up in the morning, bathing however you bathe, other areas of life that are pretty obvious, where you have no excuse as long as you're not just forever scrolling on forever apps.
You're actually having some time to process your your life and your responsibilities.
There's time to consider things. And certainly you give yourself action items and to do list items in your head, and then they just go into the abyss of nothing without some mechanism to capture them and put them in a queue that you're not gonna lose track of, or have too many of, which can be a problem.
But definitely worthwhile to spend some time when there is free time.
I will ask myself the question, what am I missing?
What am I forgetting? What do I need to be thinking about?
Let's just give a free, meditative canvas of free space to freely associate the what's on the agenda for the day, or what's pending?
What is going to blindside me and surprise me that's coming up on the horizon of time?
Is there margin for error within any of those things?
And can I sort of pre drill, even just in a mental manner, visualize the task that is forthcoming, or the event, or the process that is forthcoming, and walk through it, make note of what I wanna be aware of or what I wanna be careful about, and plan accordingly.
There's so many things, just the placement of when I'm sorting things out and packing things, just the placement of making it impossible to forget something, or impossible to not include something in some manner, just making that dummy proof or foolproof or fail safe.
I think that's a good reminder. I'm not gonna go into detail about why this is timely for me, but there was a costly mistake that occurred, and I immediately designed a policy for myself so it would happen never again, not on my watch.
I don't wanna be responsible for making that mistake again. And it is preventable, but only preventable if I create a repeatable, reliable mechanism that's beyond my frail hope of being able to remember what that policy is.
It's written, it's established. There is a as much as possible, foolproof, physical, if possible, or cyber is a dimension that we have to consider.
Turnstile is a good metaphor of how you get into the subway, unless you jump over the turnstile, you're not getting through without paying.
So that's how they make sure that you don't forget to pay.
So is it possible to, with elegance, have a system like that?
Or even at the grocery store, they've got those one way entrance points.
So the conceptual design of that, in the pinball game of your daily life and your professional life, etc.
Those types of things are needed so that you don't lose track of important items or don't make costly mistakes that are preventable.
And if they do occur, you have a habit to address it immediately, using some of the steps that I have shared, hopefully that helps.