Actions to avoid irreversible consequences?

Don't break more than one law at a time

3-2-1

3 copies of data

2 different storage medium

1 set of data at an off-site location

Don't waste energy trying to live life with zero irreversible or undesirable consequences.

Plan to avoid them, sure. Make good choices, sure. Accept that a lot of your learning, growing and opportunities will emerge from irreversible and undesirable outcomes

floss

Started a daily stretching routine recently. I read one of those 'things you wish your younger self did' posts and stretching came up a lot so I thought I'd give it a go. I guess there's some pretty irreversible consequences that come from aging so doing what you can to limit that seems like a good idea.

Sunscreen. This is not limited to occasional outdoor activities, because the bulk of your UV exposure over a lifetime is your everyday exposure. Use an everyday SPF moisturizer on your face, neck, and arms.

Always have backups

Figure out exactly what undesirable life consequences means to you. Some people dream of a quiet life with pets and hobbies, some would call that a failure.

But no, you can’t avoid all negative life consequences. Even if life is a 1:1 totally predictable processing machine (it’s not), you still can’t control all the inputs

Sure: never go anywhere or do anything of substance or interact with anyone in any meaningful way. Avoid the potential for consequences.

Exist, but don't live.

Avoid relying on a single failure point, especially when it’s a person or group of people, when the consequences are anything of substantial value or importance to you.

Instead, when such a failure point exists (which is more or less inevitable in life), before committing, have an alternative exit plan prepared and thought out, including the trigger point for when it’s time to bail, and preferably have the exit plan already begun in some way so that starting it up when necessary isn’t too hard.

Getting trapped in a situation where people have power over you or your situation, but are letting you down, and you have no clear recourse, is a mind fuck and gets plenty of people. The exit plan is there to protect you and provide perspective as much as giving you “an out”.

A corollary of this is that if you can’t setup a satisfactory alternative/exit plan before you commit, then you shouldn’t commit, unless you’re absolutely certain that you can live with the worst case scenario. Which is dangerous though, because it’s easy to convince yourself that things will be fine and that the worst case scenario is actually better than it will turn out to be … better to stay agile and have the exit plan.

The later you start doing drugs the better.

Try to avoid jumping off a tall building into a herd of angry goats infected with anthrax while shooting up meth with a dirty needle.

Do not parachute into hostile dictatorships naked and passionately screaming the name of the country's dictator's mother; then when the police come to deal with you, throw random narcotics at them.

Refrain from public interspecies fornication for the duration of your visits to the sacred sites of major religions.

Do not permit the bandsaw to become acquainted with your neck.

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Don't ask for life advice from strangers on the internet who have no incentive to give you GOOD life advice

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If you feel in your gut that she’s not the one, you have to trust that feeling. Going into a marriage you know is going to leave a part of your soul behind, reasoning that you’ll just give it a chance for a few years, that’s lost time. It never comes back.

You have to trust your gut. If you have a bad gut feeling but don’t want to tell others because of goals your mind is afraid of sacrificing, you need to trust your gut over your mind.

If that’s where you are, just know that there is a better life than you can imagine waiting for you, if you truly decide to feed your true self. Everything you think about losing is nothing compared to the continual warm glow of knowing you’ve got your own back.

Don’t give that up for someone else. Don’t be with someone who makes you betray yourself.

Start saving money while you're young if you're in a position to do so.

I can't believe the number of colleagues I've had in the past that were making good money without having responsibilities (living at their parents') and spending most of it at the bar or to go party in Cuba only to hear them complain years later that they didn't have enough money saved to make a 10k downpayment...

One thing that comes to mind is, avoid applying and following every rule to the extreme.

Like how you did here with rule 1 😂

Not happening. Every action and decision you make or don't results in a consequence. Cause and effect. These consequences aren't always obvious, negative, or noticeable right away but if you look far enough back on your life you will probably see how your choices snowballed to where you are now.

Some people think they are tragic characters living some Shakespearean tragedy where all the bad things happen to them are just the universe/fate giving them a bad hand. This choice to be nihilistic determinist leads to self fulfilling prophecies where they make no effort to improve their life.

Some people think they they are the masters of their own destiny and that despite there being bad parts of the world that are unfair they do the best they can to find success anyways and not throw a never ending self pity party. These people tend to get farther in life and are much more satisfied.

These differences in philosophies are indeed a personal choice everyone subconsciously makes. Whether to be the captain of the boat that is your life and steer it to the destination you want or to be a helpless passenger pushed by the oceans waves adrift until you crash.

A person in an abusive relationship chooses not to leave it through inaction. despite how much they think they have no choice because of X reasons. A severely overweight person who blames their genes and makes no effort to try and loose it. An unhappy married couple who want to divorce but convince themselves not to 'for the kids' so they live a decade or two of an unhappy existence subjecting their children to second hand misery when the better option for the kids long term wellbeing was to indeed split. There are consequences to hard decisions, sometimes its not even a right or wrong decision. The pieces just fall where they lay.

Not doing something to change the trajectory of your life is also a choice whether you want to recognize it as one or not. Its the choice of inaction that you justify to yourself.

The problem is that nobody wants to be at fault when things go wrong. Its much easier to scape goat blame to fate and all of life's unfortunate circumstances. When you do point the finger at yourself for at least some of it you gain much more control over the direction of your life.

Try to keep your cool in messy situations, that way you can easier think about how to get the least worst or even a good outcome. But it can be hard, maybe something like tapping on your arm can help to distract and clear the mind

I know that this does not answer your question, but i really cant think of something that was not already told

Don't forget earplugs when visiting a concert. Prevent tinnitus, the ringing in your ears for indefinitely.

Yes. There is an entire field of risk management devoted to this topic. It's complex.

There are some strategies that you can use in a wide variety of situations: commit as late as possible, figure out how to undo something before you do it, imagine the worst consequences to an action and then decide if you can accept that worst outcome.

How to do those things? It depends on the situation. What else can you do? It depends on the situation.

It's difficult to avoid them, but you can obviously make an insurances against some undesirable consequences, like house fire or illness.

Also keep a buffer of money to solve sudden stuff. Like, don't travel without having enough cash to get a return ticket, or if you rely on a car, you should always have enough money to make a down payment for a new one when it inevitably breaks.

In general you shouldn't have to be afraid of irreversible consequences. You have to break an egg to make a cake. Changes are most often for the better.

Some things are obviously more serious than others and sometimes you just can't know everything up front. Like having a child. That's a leap of faith that you just have to do if you want to. Changing jobs can also be nerve wrecking, but you can probably insure your income or make savings in case things don't work out.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to be able to undo?

Don't be a dick.

This question is so generic I can't help but feel there is a more specific idea behind it. Can you talk about what made you want to ask this, what kind of answers you're expecting?

Step 1. Analize what's the possible consequence / event that you find undesirable

Step 2. Determine whether there's something you can do to prevent it: if there is, go to step 3, if there's not go to step 4

Step 3. Do it, do that thing that you believe can prevent it. And after you've done it, go back to step 2 and reevaluate if there's something else.

Step 4. Since there's nothing else you can do to prevent it, accept the fact that this consequence might happen and adapt to it... you already did all you could do given the circumstances and your current state/ability, you can't do anything about it anymore, so why worry? just accept it. Try and make it less "undesirable".

Step 5. Wait. Entertain yourself some other way.. you did your part.

Step 6. Either the event doesn't happen, or it happens but you already prepared to accept the consequences.

Step 7. Analyze what (not) happened and how it happened (or didn't). Try to understand it better so in the future you can better predict / adapt under similar circumstances, and go back to step 1.

Save first.