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Plug for David Marquet's book "Turn the Ship Around" about his time improving training / operations on a submarine he commanded. Every one had to announce their intention to do an action before actually doing it, this gave others the chance to identify when someone was going to take an incorrect action before it happened.

It's a really great, short read that I'd highly recommend and gives some more background into the operational issues with the Navy.

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That approach works even if you are doing an action alone.

Stating clearly: "I am pushing my commits to production", or even trivial stuff like "I am feeding the cats".

You (a) get a chance to realize if that's a stupid thing to do,(b) get to notice if your action doesn't match your stated intent, and (c) have a better chance of remembering that you did it. It really helps me, particularly when there's a lot going on to distract you.

See also the Japanese train guards and drivers, who point at stuff they are attending to, even when no one is looking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

Seems almost like explicit mindfulness training.

I am going to type "cd /; rm -rf *<cr>"

And having said it aloud, we can fix the mistake:

     cd /; sudo rm -rf *<cr>

haven't got root?

Reminds me of rubber duck debugging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Where I work, we'll ask each other to be our "talking duck". Usually just talking through the problem, with no response from the person playing the "duck", is enough to figure out what's wrong.

I wonder if he got the idea from Japan Railways, which use a technique called "Pointing and Calling" to ensure every action is intentional.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-ja...

Seconded; this was a good one. It was on the 2014 U.S. Navy reading list.

Totally seconded. One of the principles he had that I really like is, "Don't move information to authority. Move authority to information."

I'm doing this in my pilot training as well. Makes a difference, sure learn faster/better.

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