Sharing is caring, and I want to share with you one of the tricks we use at NASA to address risk. We all have risks / challenges in our lives.
(Don't be scared by the matrix)
(Don't be scared by the matrix)
I've used this for things that are uncertain in my personal life too. There's a few parts, so stick with me. The first part is to write down the risk in a "if x, because y, then z" format
So for example, If the spacecraft blows up, because a new hire sends the wrong command, then no more science
That was a terrible example, so let's use a more practical life example: if I work too much, because of unrealistic deadlines, I will burn out
This step is the critical part because you're trying to break the problem into two key elements: a consequence and a likelihood. The goal is to reduce both.
We can do two things - reduce the likelihood, by managing schedule better & providing more realistic dates of when work will be done to bring the likelihood down.
And reduce the consequence, by finding ways to mitigate burnout - for me, that’s through combinations of things, like rest & exercise, prioritizing self-care, etc.
There's nothing magical about this approach, but by writing it out in these elements we can control (usually at least one of likelihood or consequence), we can create a plan of action to bring our risks down to the lower left corner
One of the perks of working in fault protection and spacecraft is you have a lot of tools to deal with uncertainty and changing information, but this is one of the simpler ones. I’ll work through some weirder examples (like my engineering approach to apt hunting) in the future.
