Work Begins Before the Work

Before starting, prepare not only the tool but also the space around it.

Worth checking:

• whether there is enough room;
• whether there is light and ventilation;
• where the material will move;
• where the wires, pipes and hot surfaces are;
• what can be stained, broken or set alight;
• where to put the waste;
• whether you can safely stop halfway;
• what happens if you get it wrong.

Some accidents come not from the difficulty of the work itself but from an object left underfoot, a mug under your elbow or a cable run across the walkway.

Tools and materials are better prepared in advance. You do not want to be hunting for the right spanner while your other hand holds a heavy part that is meanwhile forming its own opinion about gravity.

Before cutting, drilling and other irreversible actions, the measurement really is worth repeating. But “measure seven times” is not a literal standard. After the third identical measurement a person sometimes starts making mistakes out of boredom.

An independent check is more useful:

• another tool;
• another method of calculation;
• a drawing;
• a reference point;
• a second person when the cost of an error is high.

If the work involves fire, height, electricity, pressure, heavy objects or dangerous substances, a home video is no substitute for preparation. A good-looking clip usually shows the successful attempt and cuts the part where the author read the documentation, bought protective equipment and redid the mounting three times.

Good preparation ends in one of two decisions:

I understand how to do this safely.

Or:

This job is better given to a specialist.

The second answer is not evidence of a lack of self-reliance. Sometimes it is its most economical form.

Preparation time almost never makes it into the plan. A person estimates that putting up a shelf is twenty minutes, and that is an honest estimate of the drilling itself. Finding the wall plugs, moving the chair away from the wall, finding the extension lead, clearing the dust and taking out the box are not in the plan. So preparation is exactly what gets cut: it looks like a prelude to the work rather than the work. The result is drilling while standing on an office chair, because the stepladder is on the balcony and the balcony is buried under things that were waiting for precisely this Saturday.

Preparation becomes visible only at the moment there was not enough of it: when the part falls because your hands are busy looking for a spanner, or when the wire turns out to be exactly where the drill bit is. It is cheaper to count it as part of the work rather than a delay before the start.