Your Career And Money:

This subject is easier for me to see looking backwards rather than forward. What that means is every time I find myself in the middle of a screw-up, I can usually trace it back to an incorrect assumption I made. Let's look at a few examples:

• I'm on a camping trip and don't have any matches to start the fire. I assumed my wife packed them.

• After sailing our boat to our mooring I found there was no alcohol for the cooking stove. I assumed the boat owner stocked it with alcohol.

• I walked into a conference room to make a slide presentation and had the foresight to bring my own projector. Unfortunately there was no screen as I assumed there would be.

Sometime it is hard to recognize when you are making an assumption. It is difficult to step through all the coming events to make sure everything has been covered so that screw-ups won't happen.

This guideline is also expressed in the phrase, "Assume makes an "Ass of You and Me".