Laurie doesn’t know this, but I first heard about pre-mortems from her and I used that technique when Darrell suggested we could safely extract our car from our garage despite the fact our garage door opener was broken.

He wasn’t going to be able to lift the door on his own, and the system he’d designed that would help the two of us lift it — while logical — seemed fraught.

I was scared.

“What could go wrong?” I asked. “And what are we going to do if it does?”

He smiled. He walked me through everything. I got the reassurance I needed, and we got to work. We got the door open. We got the car out. We stopped at a convenience store for our favorite frozen treat on our way to Menards for parts to fix the opener. Then we raced (well, not really) back home to the open garage.

We got the door closed again, the same way we’d gotten it open — but in reverse. And, yes. We went through the “what could go wrong and what will we do” thing, in reverse. Nothing bad happened this time, either.

This is a brilliant life hack and I can think of two instances in the last 48 hours we didn’t use it, but should have!