If your job is like a death ride on a wild river reconsider your life choices, if you have enough privilege to do so.

Some of the reasoning may seem outdated, as it initially did to me even though I am currently reading this on a black-and-white e-paper monitor

I learnt a similar concept as a drawing style from Hergé who always made sure his illustrations worked in black and white, where it would sometimes stay unless colour was added as a bonus on top. Works wonders for xeroxable art

@eanakashima

Bringing this to the office, where emergencies are rarely this immediate, seems to be little more than applying the name to preferred behaviour where we want people to do more than just point out problems.

Is that assessment correct, or is there more to this?

And I sure do have to keep reminding people “tell people what to do, not just what not to do”…

In the vein of not focusing people's attention in an unwanted direction, I'm reminded of this bit from the 1987 edition of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (second paragraph):

It's a surprisingly accurate pattern of behavior when any sort of fear or panic takes over

When I was a young lad getting to mild mountain biking someone said "what you see is what you hit"

God, I went through independent discovery of that idea long time ago I suddenly realized if I wanted to avoid crashing into something I needed to look at where I had to go rather than the thing I was about to crash into

This is the context where I learned it. As soon as I identify a hazard, I need to immediately shift my focus to the safe part of the pavement and my front wheel just goes there. An instructor at motorcycle school told me.

First rule of tree skiing (skiing through aspen groves or other timber):

"Look and aim between the trees."

Whether it's someone else pointing, or you pointing, pointing where to go indeed matters.

I first learned this in a "regular" (not whitewater) canoe course. Important for survival there!

I can totally see the transfer to business and other spheres - thanks for sharing!

The Wikipedia page is disappointingly terse, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation .

Might as well pick something good to point at.

This lesson has many applications right now.