Recently a fine young Brazilian, with all his life in front of him, was shot in the head seven times on the London underground by the police. The police thought he was a terrorist but had not taken the time to check who he actually was. To be fair to them they thought he was about to set off a bomb and did not, at that point, have the time to check his identity. This should have been checked much earlier.
The Titanic sank in 1912 because the ship was going too fast for the lookouts to check that the way ahead was free of icebergs.
Traffic accidents are caused when drivers are in too much of a hurry to check whether any cars or motor bikes are approaching them from the side. They may even rush through red traffic lights in an attempt to reach their destination more quickly. Often, they end up reaching their destination very slowly if at all.
The failure to check, then, can lead to disasters which cause loss of life. It can lead to the failure to achieve goals.
Making time to check, on the other hand, would have allowed the Captain of the Titanic to achieve his goal of a safe Atlantic crossing. Checking and double checking can save us money as we spot discrepancies in our bank and credit card statements. It can help us achieve the goal of financial stability.
The great Jim Rohn once lost a million dollars because he had failed to check just one key word in a contract he had signed to help out some friends. I lost over 50,000 dollars a few years ago because I failed to check out the company I was buying shares from. They turned out to be frauds who were selling shares they were not licensed to sell! Five minutes on the internet might have warned me off!
Many failures to check are caused by too much haste. People enjoy the adrenalin rush of speed but dislike the slower and less glamorous process of checking the details.
The Captain of the Titanic had been told to break the speed record from Belfast to New York. He soon learned the meaning of 'more haste, less speed.'
Another cause of the failure to check is laziness. It takes effort to check fiddly little details. Paying attention to details also demands a willingness to accept boredom. Achieving almost any goal involves some kind of boring work at some point along the line. Checking details can involve a whole heap of drudgery!
Boredom is a necessary evil we all have to face when we are dealing with things like income tax which are unlikely to interest us and which demand very close attention to one figure after another and to one date after another.
I hate checking the membership details and the insurance details of my martial arts students. I enjoy teaching the martial arts but am bored by the paper work. However, without the paper work I could be sued for millions if one of my students was badly injured.
We just have to accept the fact that things, whether we like it or not, have to be checked, double checked, triple checked and if necessary checked even more. In short, our work has to be checked again and again until it is accurate and correct.
Robert Ringer, as usual, has much that makes sense to say on this subject in a great article which inspired this one - 'A Vote for Execution':
"Never use the excuse that you were too tired or, worse, too busy to check your work. Through considerable experience I have found that no one has a great deal of interest in how tired or busy I am. What they are interested in is my giving them what I promised, giving it to them correctly, and giving it to them on time. There's a name for this in motivational parlance: Whatever it takes!"
The Captain of the Titanic failed to give his passengers what he had promised - a safe and speedy passage to New York. If you promise speed and provide an icy grave instead, you have clearly not delivered speed or safety.
Robert Ringer, like all of us, likes a job to be done accurately and on time. This requires the person doing the job to have a sense of urgency and the realization that our time on this planet is limited. I love the line from the poet Marvel:
"At my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
A job needs to be completed properly. Ringer argues correctly that, if we delegate a job to someone else, we are still responsible for its full completion. We still need to check that the job has been done well.
If you like acronyms, you might find AUD useful to remember 'Accuracy, Urgency and Done'. I prefer accuracy to come before urgency since too much urgency might destroy the necessary accuracy.
We should then accept the fact that achieving our goals and fulfilling our promises will often mean slow and painstaking attention to detail. However, this attention to detail can eventually produce speed. Accuracy can become the friend of urgency.
A top internet marketer uses checklists all the time to speed up his work. I have tried to follow his example and have a list of checklists to help me accomplish tasks like inserting a photograph on my blogs. These lists have been produced by my web designer and myself.
I act the part, very convincingly, of an ignoramus who has not got a clue what to do. We then write down step by step what I should be doing and eventually create a checklist which will allow me to accomplish some tasks at speed without the help of my web designer. As he is moving to the south coast of England soon, I need as many checklists as possible so that I can work on my own!
Checking the details can, then, save you all kinds of hassle and can even save you from an early grave. It can also save you money and effort.
We need to accept the fact that checking can be very boring but necessary. The sooner we check the details, the more relaxed we can be and the more likely we are to reach our goals.
If we are in business or doing some kind of project for others, we need to realize that they do not care if we are sick, busy or tired. They just want the job done correctly and on time,
I just entered a keyword phrase on Google - 'checking for details'. The following statement came up addressed to the students of Monash University:
"Students are strongly encouraged to frequently check that all their enrolment details are correct. The consequence of not checking your enrolment, and notifying the university of any errors, include:
incurring fees for a unit,
incurring fail grades for units not undertaken, and/or
not receiving grades for units that were studied but not formally enrolled."
Consequences of not 'checking frequently' include the loss of money, poor grades and the loss of certificates. In other words, the failure to check can lead to a lot of failures!
Last week, a car electrician discovered a fountain of petrol pouring out from a tube under the bonnet of my car. He had smelled the petrol and took the time to check. He might well have saved my life. I gave him some extra cash and promised him a large discount if he and his son joined my martial arts class!
I have just double checked this article for mistakes and found several that I needed to correct!
Focus, then, on the fact that not checking can cause inconvenience, financial loss and even loss of life. Realize that checking spells goal achievement and success. You and I may then be ready to face and even welcome the drudgery of checking, double checking and, if necessary, triple checking the details.
Rainforce Steel JUNIOR CIVIL ENGINEER General Civil Engineer
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