> I've seen this called "pointing and calling" [1], Japan's train drivers use the technique to force themselves to perform actions and take notice of the current environment.
The concept makes sense, though I don't quite fully get how to translate it to other contexts besides train driving where unexpected and unpredictable events come up all the time. Let's say you're driving a car and the traffic light turns red. Do you point at the traffic light, say "red", point at your brake pedal, say "brakes", and then hit the brakes?
In high school, I drove a 1993 Toyota Tercel. It was a functional, reliable car, but it had no keyfob to lock the doors remotely.
Getting out of your car, pressing the lock button on the inside of the driver's side door, and shutting the door are all routine, boring actions that make it easy to forget your keys inside the car. The keys can go in all kinds of places as you climb out of the car - jacket pocket, pants pocket, center console. It is very easy to lock your keys in your car.
I quickly learned to hold my keys in one hand, say out loud, "Keys in hand," and then lock the door with the other hand.
This technique is perfect for any repetitive action that could go wrong with non-trivial consequences, and there's lots of that in everyday life.
I wake up in the mornings with "Shit Shower Shave" and leave the house with "Wallet Watch Testicles Spectacles". Simple mnemonics work, doubly so if you actually say them out loud and check them each off.
I do that exact some thing, and I haven't smoked in 3 years. The downside is that if I'm supposed to remember to bring something, in addition to those 3 things, I'm extremely likely to forget it. If it's super duper important, I tie it to the door handle.
To remember to bring a physical object, I leave my keys on it. Downside, sometimes people will bring my keys to me when they find them in strange places, like the fridge.
Definitely a good idea. In the subject of the analogy (software incidents) I think both should be done -- a regular and habitual focus on important/high risk commands via procedure, and preparations for the time when the inevitable still happens because people are people and it's impossible to fully predict all potential sources of unintended consequences. A lack of habitual focus when important consequences are at stake could lead to an over-reliance on the safety nets, and you really don't want your safety nets becoming routine. Otherwise you'll need safety nets for the safety nets.
Repetitive tasks are exactly what pointing and calling helps with. The intent is to prevent the brain from going on autopilot for a task that happens exactly the same way 99.9% of the time, in order to prevent disasters that last 0.1% of the time.
Traffic lights are a lot more random (and therefore mentally engaging) than the types of things train conductors are pointing and calling.
Whenever I have something in my hand that I'm about to put down for a second in the exact absent minded kind of way that would leave me searching all over the house for it 5 minutes later, I say it out loud. "Headphones on the table by front door."
Embarrassingly I once lost a hamburger while still holding it.. I had my arm propped up on a the back of the chair and it was just out of my peripheral vision. Not my smartest moment.
I lost my sunglasses when I was wearing them! We were going to a state park for a hike. It was a 2 hr ride for which I was wearing my sunglasses but forgot. As we came out of the car to start the hike, I spent 5 minutes searching for my sunglasses in my backpack until my friend asked what I was searching for .... Maybe I should be saying "sunglasses on" from now on
Funny, there is a Polish rhyme [1] for children based on the same concept: a person searching the whole house looking for glasses which they were wearing all the time :)
I believe the trick is to anticipate failure, and call out the normal thing instead. So you’d always slow down at every light, and only speed back up after calling out green. This is what all drivers are actually supposed to do, although I fully realise nobody practically does that, which is why we get so many automobile accidents all the time.
Only speed back up after calling out green and intersection clear.
I don't necessarily always do that, and don't make audible calls, but when driving at night or in inclement weather, I try to make extra effort to check for unexpected cross traffic.
The pointing and calling performed by Japanese train drivers is very much about expected events. "Green signal" would be one of the most common call-outs. For example:
Your example is a reactive event. Something happened in your environment.
This idea is more useful for situations that you are initiating, and where feedback is not immediately obvious.
An example could be turning your car’s lights on at night. Before starting the car, you force yourself to point to the switch, say “lights on”, and do it.
I use this with keys. When leaving my office, house, or car, I hold up the key in my hand and establish sight (I don’t say anything out loud). Then I lock the door.
I'm a photographer, and I used to get annoyed that I'd have little distractions on the edges and corners of the frame, because I was focussed on the subject and overall composition. I trained myself to sort of bounce my eyes around the sides of the viewfinder when pressing the shutter (think like the DVD player menu). Now I almost never forget to check.
I don't think it really applies to stuff like driving, which almost has to be muscle memory to work at all. even with something routine and non-urgent like switching gears in a manual, the steps have to happen faster than you can say what you're doing.
a good example from normal life is (physical) key management. I used to always forget my keys when walking out the front door, which was a big problem since it locks automatically. to solve the problem, I made my back right pocket be the designated "key pocket". I now slap my right butt cheek whenever I leave a building. it might look weird to observers, but I have not once forgotten my keys since I implemented this system.
After losing my wallet several times and not having a clue when the last time I had it on me was, I implemented a similar system. I now habitually triple tap my three designated pockets for phone, wallet, keys, every time I walk through a doorway.
That way, if any of them are missing, I know they must be in the room I just left.
Invert it and I think it works. Always prepare to stop at an intersection. Then point out it is green and call out you do not need to engage in stopping.
It may seem silly, but if we asked people who drive 30+ minutes every day if they have every accidentally ran a stop sign or red light, I suspect the numbers would be quite high (though they likely happen at times/places where chance of accidents are the smallest, such as empty roads late at night).
I teach my children to point in the direction of where cars can come from before crossing the road. He used to just swing his head around before, now he has to search directions and point there to direct his attention and it works excellently.
As others have pointed out, this is for repetitive tasks that your brain wants to automate away, but you really want to keep in attention.
It can be used for exactly the same purpose: checking the environment before doing the action.
E.g. force yourself to read the “production” part of your prompt before running the command. Point at the user name before deleting its record. Read aloud the version name before sending it to deploy.
It really makes a different between just glancing at the info, and having to parse it as part of an action.
Let's say you get a request to delete users #s 1, 17, 152, and 43.
Now you can have the request and database administration tool open and point and call at the numbers and any queries and make sure you are deleting the right users.
The concept makes sense, though I don't quite fully get how to translate it to other contexts besides train driving where unexpected and unpredictable events come up all the time. Let's say you're driving a car and the traffic light turns red. Do you point at the traffic light, say "red", point at your brake pedal, say "brakes", and then hit the brakes?