Anticipates

The warning arrives while the mistake is being made, not after

A report explaining why it went wrong is late by definition. The third tense is about recognising, while it is happening, that this has happened before and how it ended.

HOW

Recognising is not guessing

Pattern

01

Something happens the same way for the third time. You do not need a model of the future to say how the previous two ended: you need memory with dates.

Now

02

The warning counts while the decision is still open. After that it is a post mortem, and there are plenty of those already.

Weight

03

Three precedents do not weigh what one does. Anticipating honestly means also saying how much ground there is underneath.

Nothing

04

With no precedent there is no anticipation, and saying so is part of doing it well. Inventing a plausible trend is the most expensive failure of all.

WHAT IT IS NOT

The three things it gets confused with

Guessing

01

Nobody knows what will happen. What can be known is what happened the last few times the situation had this shape.

Alerting

02

A system that warns about everything teaches you to ignore it. If the warning does not come with what happened before and how often, it is noise with an exclamation mark.

Deciding

03

Anticipation does not choose: it puts in front of you what usually comes next. Whoever decides is still the one who answers for the decision.