Perspectives & Strategy

Homer Simpson has at least 3 D’oh moments in every episode as he realises that he has done something so utterly stupid that this is the only comment he can make. Well life sometimes imitates art (or perhaps art reflects truisms in life), but at the end of the day we all have our D’oh moments. Sure they are never as spectacular as Homer’s, but in a cartoon you can blow up a nuclear reactor without any side affects.

Well as I was preparing for my week ahead last Sunday I was updating all my various tasks for the week ahead, including clearing down my hand written notes as I often do. In doing so I sat down and re-did the action list that I was working on with my business partner at our meeting on Friday and at midnight on Sunday sent out my new list. Trouble was I had forgotten that he had already amended the document and sent me a new version on Saturday, something he reminded me of bright an early on Monday morning. That was my D’oh moment for this week, at least I hope it is anyway.

So here is my question, and please add your answers in a comment.

We are sane, intelligent human beings – so why do we do these things? It is not about whether we are organised or not, that is the worst of it. I can can equate the effect to a computer failure. Have you ever had a computer go wrong on you when you have done the same task 3,000 time before without incident? I wonder if there is a parallel? In the same way as the computer has a blip, yet when you restart it and perform the exact same steps everything is fine, does our brain go through a blip of stupidity?

At the end of the day we all experience such moments yet most result in minor acts of stupidity, or loss of face. People do not normally get fired because of one D’oh moment, but put a string of them together and that could be another matter. Is there anything we can do to stop those D’oh moments? I am not sure there really is, we want to make sure we don’t do them in public too often.