Precautionary Reserve: Preparing for the Unexpected
How to survive and thrive in an unpredictable world
🏷️ Categories: Mental models.
In July 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was inaugurated in Washington State, USA. It was an impressive work, the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time, an engineering feat. Admirable.
Four months later it collapsed horribly due to a design flaw.
The engineers were shocked. What had happened? The whole team realized it too late... They had correctly calculated the loads that the bridge would bear because of the traffic, but no one took into account the wind forces, something that was ignored at the time (Von Kármán, 2005).
On a tragic November 7, 1940, the winds caused exaggerated oscillations in the bridge until it brutally collapsed.
This accident prompted the study of bridge aerodynamics in order to calculate a precautionary reserve large enough to withstand extreme winds.
In architecture and other disciplines, buildings are oversized so that they can withstand greater stresses than anticipated. If you build a bridge that must support a lot of traffic, any engineer will design the bridge to support much more than that weight, three times that weight, for example.
And of course, this concept can be applied in our daily lives.
Preparing for the extreme
Precautionary reserves are extra space we leave to act or be safe from extreme events. They are the buffer between danger and safety. It is a mental model for coping with the unexpected and flourishing in the midst of chaos.
1. Personal finances
A friend of mine went to live in Switzerland a few months ago. Before leaving, he made sure he had enough savings to live on for 6 months without working. In addition, he researched in detail the prices and job opportunities in the different regions. His precautionary reserve was much higher than he estimated he would spend before finding a job, but this ensured that he was not in danger during his trip.
If you earn 5000€ and spend 4950€, your precautionary reserve is minuscule.
If you earn 2500€ and spend 1000€, your precautionary reserve is large.
No matter how much you earn, there is no stability if the reserves do not allow you to withstand even a small turbulence. At the slightest surprise, your stability is at risk. The higher the precautionary reserve, the more turbulence you can withstand.
2. Time management
If everything must go perfectly to fulfill your plans, surely you did not plan well.
If you are always rushing and watching the clock, it is because you are not leaving a precautionary reserve in your agenda. It is crucial to leave a gap between tasks because if meetings tend to drag on, this small unforeseen event will cause chaos in your schedule. The same goes for punctuality, if you know it takes 15 minutes to get there, leave 5 minutes early to have a precautionary reserve.
It always takes longer than expected, even if you know it always takes longer than expected.
3. Information
Digital information is essential in our modern life.
But what happens if one day you lose access to your important files? You need to have a precautionary reserve: keep backups in this case. With a backup of your files on an external hard drive or in the cloud, if your computer fails, you will be able to recover everything without falling into a crisis and wondering why you didn't think of making a copy of all your files before.
That's what always happens with the precautionary backup, which is the silent savior.
We never remember it until we need it and we tend to expose ourselves to risk because it usually has no consequences. Until one day it does.
Everyone knows it's important to save for an emergency.
Everyone knows it's important to carry your phone if you're going far away.
Everyone knows that there may be traffic jams and you should leave with plenty of time to spare.
Everyone knows that computer systems can crash.
Everyone knows all those things, but it's easier not to make the extra effort to be well prepared in case there is an unforeseen event. If you live only in the expected, everything will collapse the moment the unforeseeable happens. Always be more cautious than necessary. Always leave a reserve for the unexpected.
Nothing ever happens.
Until one day it happens.
✍️ Your turn: What precautionary reserves do you use in your life? One habit I have is to always carry at least a half-full tank of gas, so that if I had to take an emergency drive somewhere, I could always drive straight out without relying on carrying cash or having to go to a gas station.
💭 Quote of the day: “Everything is a risk. Doing nothing is a risk. It's up to you.” Nicola Yoon, Everything Everything.
See you soon, stay safe! 👋
References 📚
Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse, 1940. (1940, 28 noviembre). Newspapers.com. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-springville-herald-tacoma-narrows-br/25160911/
Von Kármán, T. (2005). Collapse of the tacoma narrows bridge. Resonance, 10(8), 97-102. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02866750
Recently, there has been a push for incorporating VUCA into the educational system so children grow to be more prepared. VUCA is short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This seems aligned to what you suggest here about preparing in the right way.
My Grandmother always gave us a silver dollar on our birthdays -from the time we were just little.
“Always keep a little silver,” she would tell us, “not because you know what will happen, but because you never know what will happen.”
This from a woman who had lived through WWI the Spanish flu, market crash of “29” the Great Depression/ dust bowl of the thirties, WWII, the Korean War.
She knit socks and sweaters and sent them overseas to her siblings that served this country in the military.
Her family had been in Canada since the 1700’s -they knew hardship. She had a spine of steel the intestinal fortitude of Titans, and the wisdom of the ancestors.