Daily musings #580 - Wednesday, 24 August 2022

I have a scale. And I will come back to it later. So, you are driving on a road and the lane you drive on comes to an end and merges with another lane. At what point do you merge?

Some merge “proactively” early. Some merge at the right moment, perhaps just before the merge is seen ending. Some merge at the very end of the merge. Somewhere between the “right moment” and the merge ending is what I call the “last responsible moment”. After that in case, you are nearly at the merge and you sometimes go beyond the merge lane to merge, then that is what I call the “last irresponsible moment”. Anything after that is “too late” and that is where things end up in a potentially catastrophic scenario.

Extending this lane-ending metaphor, long-term drivers know a few things though. Most people drive faster than the speed limit in some way. And, when you merge the earlier you merge, the less you get ahead so it is always better to merge at the last responsible moment - one always gets ahead in traffic, especially in heavy traffic. For that one needs to dive deeper into queuing theory. But I digress. Pulling myself back to reality now.

So here is my five-level scale on doing things:

• Proactively early

• the right moment

• the last responsible moment

• the last irresponsible moment

• too late

• and there is another one - “not at all” with potentially even more disastrous consequences.

My style of blogging divagates between mostly the last responsible moment and the last irresponsible moment. And yesterday was an example of the last irresponsible moment. The consequences weren’t deep, and hopefully, some learnings will stick from it.