We had the same sort of routine as this as factory workers in Japan so that we wouldn't forget to check/do soemthing. These explicit motions help you hit all the necessary components each time when working with hundreds of repetitions a day.
It was also doctrine for emergency procedures and anything at a heightened level of care as an engineer at a company (in hkmurakami's neck of the woods, at a company in a region where a certain large automobile manufacturer sets a lot of the engineering culture).
I noticed the problem on myself on several occasions and kind of invented the same solution. For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill". Another: sometimes I'd lend some amount money to a colleague, and a few weeks later I'd have a hard time figuring whether they gav…
" I tell them to hit me (or do some other stupid thing) when they give the money back, so we both remember."
That is great and clever. I can better understand why pointing system works.
Six Flags Magic Mountain does this before launching a roller coaster. An operator announces "Visual Scan", points their hand at one end of the cars, and sweeps it along to the other.
I think I'd go insane if that was my job. It seems so utterly dehumanizing to have a human do that job every day. I don't mean just the pointing but the standing and doing things that surely computers and cameras could easily do.
This is a cultural difference. Nothing dehumanizing if you consider the stakes and increased safety that results from this.
It's not even really a cultural difference. It's perfectly normal and ordinary for a job to be repetitious, and most people do spend their entire lives going through one or a small number of set routines. That's not dehumanizing, it's the human experience.
And, at least these rail workers get to travel. Most developers sit at a desk that doesn't even move, and maybe they get to see a window, out of which the view never changes.
Wow, my reaction is exactly the opposite. Good on the Japanese railways for employing intelligent and responsible adults to care for everyone's safety instead of cheaping out with cameras and computers. These are solid, respectable jobs, and it means there will always be competent people around to help when things go awry.
Should a human being have his life's work be forty years of checking if bags are caught in a door? Modern society is weird. Automation can free us from humans having to be automatons.
On the contrary I find it humanizing: everywhere you go there is a human that can help you. As an anecdote, I was amazed to find someone at the train station of a an Osaka suburb at 11 pm. He was of great help since with his very precise map of the surrounding area I found the place I had to go for which the GPS wasn't of any help.
I think for people doing this kind of job having a job -- regardless of how stupid it seems or is -- really mean having a social life. Japan society is really harsh with non workers and living without the regularity and human contact of a job it really hard too. In a sense compagnies hiring for very low-productivity jobs are doing what the social welfare is doing in European country except self pride included.
I think that the root of this goes back all the way to Zen-type of thinking. In Zen, it's often taught that mind is elusive/delusive and action matters. "Mindlessness (mu-shin)" is often thought of the best way of carrying tasks, and I see a similar principle in many traditional martial arts/craftsmanship; a new learner should just do certain tasks without thinking/questioning, and eventually their muscle memory will…
It does sound very similar to plane checklists where the pilot has to call every item verbally.
I was going to say, it reminded me of those classic scenes from Dr. Strangelove of the bomber crew going through their procedures. Which I assumed to be pretty accurate for military environments. I think it's so exotic to my American eyes because there is something to the idea of putting the good of the collective ahead of your own ego that is so foreign to the American culture of fetishization of individual liberty, except maybe in our military.
I noticed the problem on myself on several occasions and kind of invented the same solution. For example, sometimes I would take a medicament mechanically while doing something else and just a few minutes later, forget if I took it or not. Solution: say loud to myself "I'm taking a pill". Another: sometimes I'd lend some amount money to a colleague, and a few weeks later I'd have a hard time figuring whether they gav…
I also ended up instituting a physical task to track my pill taking. Need to take two pills at breakfast and I was always forgetting if I'd already taken them or not. Now, when I sit down to eat I move the pill bottles to the middle of the table. End of the meal, after taking the pills, bottles go back on a shelf at the end of the table. Not only do I no longer forget, more importantly I no longer need to remember, which is one thing off my memory list for the day.
I have a strict rule that I must touch my keys before closing the front door, because I discovered the keys in my memory don't open the door as well as the keys in my pocket.
Attentiveness in self driving cars is/will be an issue.
I wonder if there's anything like this that could be applied there. No ideas come to mind, though I often think about how trains on tracks have mechanisms for maintaining driver awareness.
We had the same sort of routine as this as factory workers in Japan so that we wouldn't forget to check/do soemthing. These explicit motions help you hit all the necessary components each time when working with hundreds of repetitions a day.
It was also doctrine for emergency procedures and anything at a heightened level of care as an engineer at a company (in hkmurakami's neck of the woods, at a company in a region where a certain large automobile manufacturer sets a lot of the engineering culture).