Safely Maximizing Peak Performance Efficiency Under Time Pressure

This is an exploration of how to apply techniques of safety when in situations of peak performance, when efficiency really matters, where you really need to not injure yourself while executing tasks that are time pressurized, where you have to get things done fast, and you wanna do so without injuring yourself or others. Throughout my life, there’s been a lot of situations where I’m operating different types of equipment and the setup time, the efficiency of that process can lead to errors and accidents and injuries. Unfortunately, because of the time pressure, it’s a paradox because you would like to do things at a safe pace, but sometimes, depending on your line of work, what industry you’re in, how much exposure you have to emergency situations and disasters, whether you’re a professional first responder or someone in some kind of uniform where you face danger and face operating environments that require deployment of equipment at a rapid pace. There’s always a chance you may skip over something in a checklist, or have the sense that you know it so well that you don’t need a checklist, and therefore, either way, there’s always a margin for error. So what I’ve arrived at in my life now, more than ever, is spending more time in advance, making more comprehensive checklists and really drilling as much as possible a process that is going to be repetitive, so that it lends itself to systemization. One good definition of a system that I’ve heard is something that has a pattern that repeats, simple as that. So that could be a natural system or artificial system, or something with electrical engineering involved, whatever it may be, if it’s a pattern that repeats, that’s one way of thinking of a system. So that means that pattern can be really inspected. It can be analyzed. It can be kind of put under a microscope. And so in the processes that I have in my life where I have to do rapid deployment, for example, rainwater catchment, there’s a time pressure to not lose any of that rain, and for myself to not get too exposed to the elements if it’s a storm. So the idea of doing it quickly and safely, that’s just one procedure, not tripping over your own equipment, not tripping over anything, clearing paths in advance. All things that can be done to remove hazards and to improve the ability to operate at a fast pace, as fast as you can safely, with as few dangerous obstacles that you can foreseeably address and remove in advance. That’s my real priority. My prerogative in life is to look at everything and have the eyes for, oh, I’m placing some object somewhere that will be squarely in the way of some emergency evacuation procedure, and it’s going to slow me down by that many milliseconds, or that many minutes, or that many hours. I’ve been reiterating through that process with every sphere, every dimension of my life for years now. It’s culminating in a number of areas. But broadly speaking, the general take away of this thought process is that anything that repeats in your life, any pattern of life, can be studied in that way. For example, where do I keep my keys? Do they get tossed in a drawer and then I have to look under things inside that drawer every day to find them, and then put them in a pocket where they could fall out. Or do I use a carabiner? And whatever type of preferred cordage you might like to use? For me, it’s 550 paracord. But in order to have a procedure where, when you go to bed or you get up or whatever, there’s a system in place that’s a pattern that you can create a base line for and then optimize over time. I have in my fatigue shorts that I wear, general issue combat fatigue pants. They’ve been commercialized as cargo pants, yet those, typically, to me, do not have the so called mil spec that I’m used to. It works best for me, military specification, so called cargo pants, large pockets are usually bigger than th

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