I like this article. Sorry you ran into such a scary situation!
This may seem like a tenuous connection, but my fiancé and I are planning our wedding, and this article made me think about how we’re approaching that process. We both worked on inventorying the details and risks we needed to quiz venues about—surprise upcharges, ADA accessibility, the level of service, whether they had vendors experienced with their venue and willing to continue working there.
It didn’t take too long to master a pretty comprehensive list of questions, and of course we can write it down too. This lets us pretty efficiently vet places both by email/phone and in person. I’m by no means a naturally suspicious person, but I find that applying that scrutiny comes easily when I prepare the checklist of questions to ask in advance.
Probably the same approach can be applied to other big decisions, including renting or buying a home, choosing a romantic partner, picking a career, school or employer. I find approaching these questions systematically makes me feel more relaxed and in control and interested in the process. AI is very helpful for brainstorming the questions to ask.
So just a generally more structured and systematic approach to decision making seems good. Or for decisions you’ve already made (ie the house you’re already in), making a habit of a periodic, maybe annual, inspection or inventory. Seems like a very healthy habit to get into.
As always, the issue is figuring out where to pour time and attention to make the right decisions, and where to coast off heuristics. I can’t get into the habit of reevaluating all things every year about every topic, and my failure was more in not realizing that the topic of the safety of my house was a topic to think about.
How do you decide when to use a structured and systematic approach when making a decision?
By experiment, I guess? I don’t have a well worked out philosophy on this specific issue. But in general, I think that when you have a plausible idea like this, it’s good to just budget some time for a few tests to learn how onerous it is (or isn’t), and see if it catches anything that make it seem worthwhile. You’ll probably figure out intuitively when the amount of inventorying and investigation is starting to seem excessive. And probably the level you should be at is not zero. So then it’s just about figuring out the highest priority areas and working your way down the list gradually over time.
I’ll bet you could figure out a solid plan (especially now with AI) for inventorying potential safety issues in your house in an afternoon and execute in a few hours, especially with housemates to help.
I like this article. Sorry you ran into such a scary situation!
This may seem like a tenuous connection, but my fiancé and I are planning our wedding, and this article made me think about how we’re approaching that process. We both worked on inventorying the details and risks we needed to quiz venues about—surprise upcharges, ADA accessibility, the level of service, whether they had vendors experienced with their venue and willing to continue working there.
It didn’t take too long to master a pretty comprehensive list of questions, and of course we can write it down too. This lets us pretty efficiently vet places both by email/phone and in person. I’m by no means a naturally suspicious person, but I find that applying that scrutiny comes easily when I prepare the checklist of questions to ask in advance.
Probably the same approach can be applied to other big decisions, including renting or buying a home, choosing a romantic partner, picking a career, school or employer. I find approaching these questions systematically makes me feel more relaxed and in control and interested in the process. AI is very helpful for brainstorming the questions to ask.
So just a generally more structured and systematic approach to decision making seems good. Or for decisions you’ve already made (ie the house you’re already in), making a habit of a periodic, maybe annual, inspection or inventory. Seems like a very healthy habit to get into.
As always, the issue is figuring out where to pour time and attention to make the right decisions, and where to coast off heuristics. I can’t get into the habit of reevaluating all things every year about every topic, and my failure was more in not realizing that the topic of the safety of my house was a topic to think about.
How do you decide when to use a structured and systematic approach when making a decision?
By experiment, I guess? I don’t have a well worked out philosophy on this specific issue. But in general, I think that when you have a plausible idea like this, it’s good to just budget some time for a few tests to learn how onerous it is (or isn’t), and see if it catches anything that make it seem worthwhile. You’ll probably figure out intuitively when the amount of inventorying and investigation is starting to seem excessive. And probably the level you should be at is not zero. So then it’s just about figuring out the highest priority areas and working your way down the list gradually over time.
I’ll bet you could figure out a solid plan (especially now with AI) for inventorying potential safety issues in your house in an afternoon and execute in a few hours, especially with housemates to help.