The broken window effect
— I had to get a new mobile phone, because of the broken window effect.
— Nice. What did you get? The new Nexus…? wait, what? ‘The heck is the “broken window” effect?
— Okay, I promise this makes sense. Let me tell you about the the theory and then I’ll tell you what happened to my old mobile phone.
The broken window effect
Photo by Aron Jäger on Unsplash
You might have heard about this before, for example in Caring about coding on the 8th Light blog.
Introduced in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. the Broken windows theory can be put into context pretty easily.
Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)
To me, the key here is that once something is perceived as not being taken care for or not being important it’s going to be damaged pretty quickly.
From pristine to unusable
A few months ago I left my mobile phone on the bed. My cat decided it was taking his spot so he did what cats do, got rid of it.
When I found it, it was facing down on the ground. At this moment, my mobile phone was a practical scientific experiment.
At that point, I had only dropped my mobile phone once before. I had one of those protective screen layers which worked perfectly. The protection cracked, but the screen remained unscathed. I removed the broken shattered layer but instead of buying another one right away I kept putting it off again and again.
When I picked it up, sure enough, there was a cracked screen. Serves me right. I should’ve put the phone in a safer place. I should’ve bought another screen protection layer since the first one already saved my ass before. But I’m an idiot, and I didn’t.
From that moment on, I dropped my phone maybe once a week. It’s not like I wasn’t being careful at all, I just was less careful than before. There were a few close calls where I would catch my phone in the air after the earphones’ cable yanked the mobile phone out of my pocket.
About a month ago, my mobile phone started dropping calls about a minute into the conversation. Then it started rebooting once a week. Then once a day. Then it got stuck in a rebooting loop for an hour or two every day.
It all started the moment the screen got cracked. Not fixing it lead to more neglect and abuse, and ultimately, to the death of my mobile phone.
It happens to me all the time
After realising everything was my fault, and how it started, I began thinking about how many other similar situations I’ve been were the outcome is the same. If something goes sideways, the whole thing gets ditched and I move to something else. It happens to me with projects, tasks, blog posts, travel plans…
I think I learned my lesson. My Nexus 5x is coming tomorrow, along with a screen protector and case. As for the rest of the stuff, I’m trying to have my eyes more open and not let small setbacks throw me off.
Let’s see if I can keep up :)