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I think the general principle is transferable from aviation to lutherie, as the psychology of repeating tasks is similar: The FAA studied accident statistics as related to hours of pilot-in-command time and found that the accident rate peaked at around 300 hours of flight time, not, as a layman's guess would suggest, highest with the least experience and reducing steadily thereafter. Seems like I-got-this relaxation of focus was involved. My own experience in the wood shop agrees with this. I don't make serious mistakes with a tool until some time after I start using it, not when I first start using it.

I think you are onto something. Same thing happens to me

Ed
It's not a mistake unless you can;t fix it

Aviation is a good analogue to applying error control in woodworking. I'm using a vintage technique developed during the B-17 program in the 1930's: checklists. Seems like every error I make is about forgetting something more so than getting sloppy or overconfident. Practice and continual learning are rounding out the other deficiencies. :-)

One of my many shortcomings is that I am lazy when it comes to stopping to document what I am doing or have done. I try to be patient and even pride myself on the fact that building guitars has taught me the importance of being focused and patient else I make mistakes I later regret, but I haven't translated that into the need to document my work which would then lead to the ability to create checklists.

But I do recognize that checklists would help me tremendously, especially since I have a lot less experience than many on this forum. So I have an idea that one of the many technological innovations out there now might be a good compromise for me and perhaps others. I am referring to things like the voice activated list making capability available with several large tech vendors. You know the ones: "Hey A......., put bread on my shopping list". Maybe if I can dictate notes to those devices and later print them out I can use that as a launchpad to create checklists??

I have one of the listening devices in the shop already and use it to listen to music, so for me there would be no investment involved.

I will follow up and report back.

Rex

What a brilliant idea! I have one of those sonos/alexa devices that i have no idea what to do with. Having it create and repeat back lists sounds interesting.

It's a bit old school, but I'm using a dry erase board with a checklist. I follow the checklist. I learned to do it while active duty in the Air Force and it's worked for me ever since.