A safety habit earns its value through incidents that never become stories.

The proof of a good habit is a life with nothing in it to report. Checking the gas, wearing the belt, slowing at the junction: each one succeeds by producing an ordinary evening, and ordinary evenings do not get talked about. Because there is no story, the habit looks like fuss and becomes the first thing dropped when time is short. Whatever prevents trouble is always underpaid in attention.

Keep the small routines that have never obviously paid off. When you are tempted to skip one, remember that its entire record is the absence of anything worth telling.