I’m generally a pretty safe driver by all accounts. I drive just barely over the speed limit and rarely rush anywhere (no lane changing and weaving for me) since I simply don’t see the point in saving 30 seconds driving across town.

That doesn’t mean I’m free from driving mistakes.

Almost there

Yes the night was dark (uh it was night so of course) sure it was raining but my windshield wipers work well.

Not to mention that I Rainx the windshield.

Yes my brother-in-law was in the car and we were having a good talk. I was involved and enjoying time with him.

None of these external reasons had anything to do with me almost hitting a pedestrian.

The sole reason I was rolling through the stop light and not paying attention to anyone in the cross-walk was that our destination was directly across the intersection and the best route to parking is to make a right hand turn at the lights.

I was focused on the fact that I was almost there. My incorrect application of attention could have easily cost a couple their lives, or at the very least hurt them severely.

There would have been no one to blame but myself.

Almost done

I’ve had projects follow the same course.

I work diligently for months on something big. Then in the last 2 weeks I start to think about almost being to the launch phase. Launching means project transition and freedom, or at least a new project.

With that transition in sight I start to focus on the new project and getting it spun up only to miss something large and obvious in the launch of the project I should be focused on.

Things almost head off the rails and are only saved by last minute action and overtime.

Whew! it’s fixed and I launched the project properly but was anything learned?

Process

When I was in drivers education we were told to stop behind the big white line at a red light. Once we had come to a complete stop and surveyed the intersection and determined that it was safe we could roll forward and make a right hand turn on a red light.

There was a very specific procedure for navigating the process.

It was simple and repeatable.

It would set you up to catch most of what could go wrong during a right hand turn on a red light.

I totally threw that out the window when I saw my destination approaching.

Launching a site also has a fairly generic template of tasks.

  1. Get final sign off from the client
  2. Check DNS stuff
  3. Make sure no email will be affected with the DNS changes
  4. Backup the database
  5. Backup the files
  6. Double check your backups
  7. Move all the stuff
  8. Change DNS

You may argue with me on order, but you should catch my drift.

We should have a simple repeatable process to follow when we are launching a site. This simple process helps save us from ourselves since it allows us to see the forest for the trees.

It helps us focus on the fact that we still have a project to safely land before we can dash off to the next thing.

Do you have a checklist? Do you land projects as well as you start them?

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