Complacency

According to Larry Wilson in his article written on September 01, 2010. Complacency causes many problems, but the biggest or worst is that it leads to “mind not on task.” Once the fear is no longer preoccupying, your mind can wander. And when you’re thinking about something other than what you’re doing at the moment, your most important asset — your star player — is sitting on the bench.

Think about all of the times you’ve been hurt (not including sports): Can you think of even one time in your life when you’ve been hurt when you were thinking about what you were doing and the risk of what you were doing at the exact instant when you got hurt? Note: If you’re like most people, you can’t think of even one, let alone 10. And yet we’ve all been hurt thousands of times if you count all of the cuts, burns, bruises, and scrapes we’ve had.

While it is so true that our mind is indeed our most important safety “device.” But here’s the catch: We don’t always need to be thinking about what we’re doing, from a risk perspective, in order to do many things (such as drive, eat, get dressed etc.) without getting hurt. We can all do lots of things on auto-pilot. So the first thing people need to do is recognize or accept that their mind will wander if they’ve done the same thing many times before. It’s going to happen. It happens to everybody. It doesn’t make you a bad person — just a dead one, or a disabled one, or a lucky one. So how do we avoid Complacency?

When completing routine tasks, it’s pretty easy for our minds to wander. Turn-off “auto pilot” and actively re-engage yourself in the task at hand.

Tips for re-engagement:
Review your FLRA. Bring your mind back to the job.
Walk away. Taking a step back will help clear your mind so you can return to the job focused.
Ask your supervisor for time to deal with personal issues that may be impacting your ability to
focus.
Take a moment to watch a coworker work –studies show it will raise awareness for both you and
your coworker.