What is The Shadow-Murphy’s Law?

Murphy’s Law is the old adage that: “If it can go wrong, it will”

For our purposes, this idea suggests that if our bodies can do it wrong, they will. There are examples of it everywhere. Here’s two:

If you can slouch in an office chair, you will.

If you can sleep on your stomach and crick your neck, you will.

Some time ago I coined the term “The Shadow-Murphy’s Law” with my patients but, honestly, it does a poor job of illuminating the point I am trying to make without explanation.

It shines a light on to the unseen part Murphy’s Law, kind of. If it can’t be done wrong, it won’t. Our two examples become:

If you can’t slouch in an office chair, you won’t.

If you can’t sleep on your stomach, you won’t.

Of course, in practice, things are rarely so black-and-white or binary. The point is this.

In our lives we ought to identify the circumstances that permit errors or mistakes that lead to injury and then take responsibility engineer new situations so that they cannot happen, are far less likely or the magnitude of the error is lessened.

So, what would this look like? Let’s use those two examples from before.

If you can’t slouch in an office chair, you won’t.

This one is simple in concept, difficult in practice. But let’s keep it straight (haha). When you pull your chair in so that your ribs touch the desk, with the chair back upright, now it’ll be harder to slouch. If it isn’t enough try pulling your keyboard and mouse toward you. Still managing to slouch? Change the height of your arm rests so that your shoulder’s are relaxed and not too high or too low. Need one more tweak? Tilt the pan of the chair forward to open your hips up and encourage you to extend your back (it will make you sit up right).

If you can’t sleep on your stomach, you won’t.

By hugging a pillow in front of us we deny our unconscious selves the ability to roll forward on to our chest. This takes pressure off our neck and puts us closer to a ‘neutral’ posture. Naturally, some folks will find a way to remove the pillow in their sleep. That’s okay. The process of engineering these situations is iterative. Not always on our first idea will we find the final solution. Nor will that solution always work for others.

So what happens if we don’t manage our lives in this way?

If mistakes can be made, they sometimes will. So, to reduce mistakes we must consistently spend mental energy monitoring for them, more energy navigating around them or tonnes of energy correcting them.

Will power and focus will only work for a while. In my opinion, they are over-rated and aren’t an effective strategy for long term, sustainable change. Permanent change needs to be a habit that is entwined with your identity, a social pressure or it needs to happen by circumstance because it can’t, not happen.

It’s a lot more work over time if you don’t master the art of engineering these situations early. Invest early in yourself, your family, your community or your work and you will reap the rewards that come later.