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I was at the fitness center the other day. I got a quick workout-nothing too strenuous...never is.
(Oh wait...no...I trained really hard until I was rung out exhausted, sweating, aching...at the point of collapse; dedication second to none!)
I was finishing up and went to stretch.
There is an apparatus for stretching. In the three years I've been a member, it has always been in the exact same spot. I've used it after virtually every workout, over and over and over again.
Next to it is an ab exerciser. The machines are very different in their make up, although a similar size and color.
So I wandered over, ready to elasticize those muscles and go home. I stepped to the stretch apparatus, raised my right foot to straddle it and realized, suddenly, that it was not the stretch apparatus at all. I was mounting the ab machine.
Foot in the air, I realized that someone had switched the two. Balanced on my left foot, I looked over my left shoulder and there was the stretcher. The ab exerciser was in the stretch spot and vice versa.
This is no big deal, of course. The fitness center can put their machines wherever they want and the new location was just as convenient as the old.
What stunned me is that I didn't notice the change until I was just about on the machine. It was a strange way to mount an ab machine to be sure; I'm really glad nobody had a camera.
Habits, habits, habits, habits...
Do you wonder why manufacturing plants have to constantly harp on safety? Or why, in an office setting, it takes great effort to avoid making silly costly unnecessary errors?
When we repeat the same task over and over again, we get very good at it. We become so good at it that we start to disengage the brain-we tend to do it without thinking. This is called unconscious competence.
Overconfidence sets in...and then we start taking shortcuts.
Do you pay attention to how you drive a car? Probably not...we seldom think about it. Compare the habits you have when driving now compared to the habits you had when you first learned.
Back then, it was mirrors checked before pulling out, hands at 10 and 2, hand completely off the steering wheel when engaging the blinker and then immediately back on again, methodically looking both ways and then proceeding from a stop sign at which you came to a complete stop and probably waited a beat or two.
Now? States have to pass laws to keep us from texting and driving!
So many accidents and mistakes happen because of shortcuts taken, lack of attention to detail and bad habits created by overconfidence. The overconfidence that comes from redundancy.
So it is on our manufacturing floors and in our offices.
All the more reason to give your people a variety of challenges where you can to help keep them alert, creative, motivated and focused. Of course, we have to example focus too, and exhort and remind them to keep their brains fully engaged.
Businesses lose millions of dollars per year in accidents and unnecessary errors created by the inattention redundancy causes.
Well, it could be worse, I suppose. You could straddle an ab machine in a really odd way.
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