Plan your misses

If you speed up to try and get past a traffic light that's turning red, there's a decent chance you'll have a fatal accident. But you've probably done it before and nothing happened. And if you ask your friends, they'll tell you the same thing.

Many people you know will have tried it at some point, with zero repercussions. The problem is, you can only ever speak to the people who got away with it, because everyone else is dead, paralysed or missing some limbs.

It's easy to take near misses for granted because you don't get to test all the possible outcomes. You only have the life you're living now.

You run a red light and a version of you in 3 parallel universes gets smushed but you live and think you can get away with it again.

You have another bad argument with your wife - 6 alternate versions of you are signing divorce papers and you're none the wiser.

You're already living in the best-case scenario, or something close to it.

So how do we get better at noticing near-misses? Ask this question: of various areas of your life:

If my project were to completely fall apart tomorrow, what would be the most likely cause?

If I get fired tomorrow what would be the most likely reason?

If my boyfriend breaks up with me next week, what might have been the final straw?

"Identify near misses in advance, make plans to fix or avoid them, and you'll always be a step ahead of calamity."