Just Enough to Be Dangerous - February 14, 2024

We're getting Just Enough to be Dangerous. Navigating Risk. Determining Menace.

Recognizing Hazards. Traversing Peril. All this and a good deal more, after the break.

Welcome back all you beautiful people. We're talking Just Enough to be Dangerous. As always, I'm Nick.

That's Erick. We're the Get Good Guys. And this is the Get Good Guide.

Welcome on in my friends. Appreciate you taking the time. How are you? Good to see you.

It's good to see you all. On this dangerous morning. This, you know, is there any more dangerous a holiday than St. Valentine's Day? Actually, maybe not.

Perhaps not. It's quite, quite dangerous. And we are talking risk, menace.

Peril, hazards. Are you expecting me to finish that? I was hoping you would. I was hoping you would.

That's an alley-oop that bounced off the backboard. Hey-o. Sorry, I was talking to somebody in the stands.

We're talking about that phrase, just enough to be dangerous. We hear that phrase at times in a pejorative sort of negative way. Sure.

Yeah, often from people in that greatness trap, right? Who are differentiating, trying to differentiate themselves from people who are good or less than. You know, we're going to delve into a little bit today what that difference looks like between dangerous and good. Because they're nowhere near the same.

Right, right. Yeah, if you are good at something in the sort of get-good-guide way, you are probably well past the phrase, you know, just enough, knowing just enough to be dangerous. Yeah.

Perhaps there is even as much difference between dangerous and good as there is between good and great. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's worth noting on that subject that one of the great things is that to move from dangerous to good isn't so insanely broad as going from good to great.

Right. So you can make it past that realm, but your abilities, like the level of your ability is what will be kind of even there. Yeah.

A few examples. Yeah, let's do it. We have a few ones.

The ATV versus dirt bike example. And this was an example that I was taught when I was a much younger, better-looking man. Remains to be seen.

By a guy named Charles who we were working on a case together, and he sort of explained, hey, look, there's a lot more accidents, really terrible injuries on ATVs than dirt bikes. Sure. And that's a little bit counterintuitive, or at least it was for me.

And he sort of said, the reason for that is because you can hop on an ATV with no ability, no training, roll the throttle forward, and you're going at top speed immediately. Whereas with a dirt bike, even though it seems like it would be more dangerous. At first look, it's like, oh, well, this is way more dangerous.

Of course I can fall off this easier. Right. But you need a level of skill and capacity to even get it up to speed.

Sure. And so there are far fewer, far fewer catastrophic injuries on dirt bikes than ATVs. Yeah, because as your skill with being able to even use the piece of equipment grows, that danger tends to lessen.

And so there are probably a list of skills, a number of things where the activity itself sort of either protects you or puts you at risk by its very nature. Has some inherent dangers or not. Right.

So when you're undertaking something, you may want to take a moment and look at it and say, okay, is this sort of, am I going to be able to do a lot in this right away? Am I at risk right away? If so, you may want to sort of mitigate that risk. Yeah. Yeah.

The one where you're at risk right away that we talked about, the example is working with electrical. In the DIY realm. Well, in any realm, really.

Sure, sure. Right. In any realm.

The risks don't go away. Your ability to manage them improves. Right.

Right. So if we were talking about like someone who has no background, no certification, trying to install a circuit breaker in their home, for instance, versus painting a room in their home. Right.

Both DIY projects. You could go down to the big box store and buy the equipment. Everything you need.

Yep. But one potentially can kill you. And the other one is painting a room.

Yeah. Right. So there's a very big difference.

And one way to kind of navigate or determine the menace or hazard or peril. Sure. Is to look and see, okay, do we license people to do this? Right.

As a society. Have we decided that we need rules? There's an inherent hazard here. We need to mitigate this danger on behalf of society.

And that's a pretty good rule to sort of say, well, we license that. If we as a collective, you know, as humans have decided, hey, listen, this thing is dangerous enough that we need to make sure that the people who are performing it have enough skill that it's going to be safe. That's a pretty good determiner of we need to cover some bases before we jump in.

The other one we talked about is like the ATV versus dirt bike example, where you might not have to be certified for either. But there's different competitive levels. Yeah.

If you look at an activity and there are people who do it professionally, chances are there is more inherent danger on one versus the other. Yeah. Yeah.

That, you know, of course, isn't true for every single thing. In this example, it's something that really kind of holds true. So let's talk about some ways to mitigate this risk.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We have and there's probably a number of ways, but we've looked at four specific ways.

The first one is perhaps the one that you can't do by yourself at all. Right. Which is to seek out professional instruction.

Professional instruction or certification or professional education. Yeah. And this is one that will have a great deal of impact.

Right. You're going directly to the source of information, kind of person to person, and you can ask direct questions and that sort of stuff. It has a little bit more of a barrier to entry sometimes.

Right. It might be monetary cost. It might be time.

Who knows? Maybe even where you live. Yeah. Availability may just be a factor.

Yeah. Right. So that's, you know, that's obviously a great option.

But there are some other things that you can do that don't require others, essentially. Right. Yeah.

The first one is a conscientious approach. It's to take a hard look at what you're doing before you're doing it and ostensibly determine the risk levels. And this is kind of where we go back to those examples.

Thinking about those examples, asking yourself, okay, is this something that is typically done by licensed professionals? Sure. Is this something where there's very obvious, you know, risks or hazards or dangers? Yeah. And this is a good example that really we talk about in the guide often.

And we're working towards changing our mindsets to this get-good mindset of being more conscientious about whatever we're doing. Right. So hopefully that will become a little bit more second nature.

A controlled environment. Yeah. Yeah.

This is a really interesting one. So if you were going to take on electrical work, you could do it in a way where you had shut down power completely to the box. Right.

And you could have, you know, no one around while you're doing it. Even something as simple as painting a room. There are fumes.

For sure. You do want to ventilate. So you wait until people are out of the house.

Yeah. Something like that. Well, open the windows maybe.

Yeah. Right. Something simple.

This is something, even when you become more skilled, it doesn't go away. Yeah. Right.

Like working in a lab, for instance. There's a lot of things in place to help mitigate those inherent risks. Right.

Well, and even if you look at like the military is great at this. They have a series of less and less controlled environments during their training. Right.

Eventually resulting in sort of combat capability, which is the uncontrolled environment. Right. And then the last one that we talked about for ways to mitigate your risk is to know your limits.

Sure. Is to know your limits. And this is, I think we're talking a bit more in a latter episode about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And that is a cognitive bias that aligns very, very well with the get good mindset. But essentially, you know, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect is the inability to understand your actual, your capacity in any given thing because you're not good enough at it. Right.

But what I'd like to just kind of add on to that is that this is not a negative thing. No. I think knowing your limits tends to be a very negative phrase, like don't go chasing waterfalls, as it were.

But like the idea is that's not the case. Right. You're going to be able to grow those limits.

You're going to build within them and then grow from there. And that's very much an aspect of the get good mindset is that you are going to pass through the hazard, the dangerous times, but you're aiming to do so safely and then quickly. Right.

And then getting to that point where, yeah, I'm good. I'm good at this. I can safely operate.

I can do these things. And it's not a bad sort of aspect of determining whether or not you've reached good. If you feel you can pretty accurately place yourself.

Yeah. Am I in control? Do I understand the hazards? And we'll talk a few more examples over at the Patreon, I think. Yeah.

All right. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate you taking the time.

And we will see you in the outro. Well, gee, thanks, everybody. We sure do appreciate you taking the time on this holiday Wednesday.

It is St. Valentine's Day. If you want a little bit more of that sweet, sweet get good gold, head on over to Patreon, patreon.com slash get good guide. We would love to have you join us over there.

Check out the website as well. Get good dot guide where you can find a downloadable get good guide. We're so happy and grateful for you taking the time.

As always, I'm Erick. That's Nick. We're the Get Good Guys. And this is the Get Good Guide. Oh, I knew a girl. Her name was Peril, Peril, Peril, Peril.