In the late 1940s, an Air Force officer named Capt. Ed Murphy expressed his displeasure with the failure of a research test conducted by defense contractor engineers by exclaiming:
If there are two or more ways to do something,
and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe,
then someone will do it!
Since then, Murphy's Law has been refined to:
If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway!
Murphy's Law has expanded to explain every type of situation or event that should go correctly but does not! Among these Laws are explanations for failures in human performance with which you may be familiar:
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong...
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse...
Things get worse under pressure...
Nothing is as easy as it looks...
If you think there are four possible ways something can go wrong, and plan for them, the fifth way which for which you were unpreprared for will promptly happen...
Everthing takes longer than you think...
Every solution breeds new problems...
The important things are always simple. The simple things are always hard...
When managers talk about productivity, they are never talking about themselves...
There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is always enough time to do it over...
People don't make the same mistake twice, they make it three, four, or five times...
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done...
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time...
and finally, when explaining individual attitude problems, try this one:
Success is a matter of luck, just ask any failure!
These are some of my favorites. If you would like to share your law, e'mail it through the "Contact Info" section of this site.