Dr. Doug McGuff is an emer­gency physi­cian in South Car­olina. From this per­spec­tive, he has com­piled a list of twelve tips on avoid­ing what he calls ‘neg­a­tive Black Swan events’—an early death from things we con­sider unlikely (but are all-too-common to emer­gency physicians).

  1. Drive the biggest vehi­cle you can afford to drive.
  2. Never get on a 4-wheeler ATV [quad bike].
  3. Do not road cycle or jog on pub­lic roads/roadsides.
  4. Do not fly a plane or heli­copter unless you are a full-time pro­fes­sional pilot.
  5. If you are walk­ing down a side­walk and are approach­ing a group of loud and appar­ently intox­i­cated males, cross to the other side of the street imme­di­ately. If con­fronted, run.
  6. If your gas grill won’t start… walk away.
  7. Never dive into a pool or body of water (except in a pool div­ing area marked 9 feet or deeper after you have checked it out feet-first).
  8. Never get on a lad­der to clean your gut­ters, or on your roof to hang Christ­mas lights. Do not cut down trees with a chainsaw.
  9. If you are retire­ment age and plan on mov­ing to a new home… think twice.
  10. If any­one tries to force you into your car or car trunk at gun point, don’t cooperate.
  11. If you are in any per­sonal or pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship that exhausts you or oth­er­wise causes you recur­rent dis­tress, then end the rela­tion­ship immediately.
  12. Don’t play the lot­tery… you might win.

From tip num­ber 8:

In gen­eral, any house or lawn work that you can hire for an amount equal to or less than your own hourly wage is money well spent.

I use this advice for every­thing. For most of us money is more abun­dant than time—if a job will take an hour for me to com­plete but the hir­ing of a pro­fes­sional to do this (in 10 min­utes) will cost me less than or equal to my hourly wage, outsource.

On play­ing the lot­tery (num­ber 12): it’s not just win­ning that you have to worry about—it’s the tak­ing part, too. From Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk (an excel­lent read and a deserved final­ist for this year’s Royal Soci­ety Prize for Sci­ence Books):

Sup­pose the state of Cal­i­for­nia made its cit­i­zens the fol­low­ing offer: Of all those who pay the dol­lar or two to enter, most peo­ple will receive noth­ing, one per­son will receive a for­tune, and one per­son will be put to death in a vio­lent man­ner. Would any­one enrol in that game? Peo­ple do, with enthu­si­asm. It is called the state lot­tery. And although the state does not adver­tise it in the man­ner in which I have described it, that is the way it works in prac­tice. For while one lucky per­son wins the grand prize in each game, many mil­lions of other con­tes­tants drive to and from their local ticket ven­dors to pur­chase their tick­ets, and some die in acci­dents along the way. Apply­ing sta­tis­tics from the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion and depend­ing on such assump­tions as how far each indi­vid­ual dri­ves, how many tick­ets he or she buys, and how many peo­ple are involved in a typ­i­cal acci­dent, you find that a rea­son­able esti­mate of those fatal­i­ties is about one death per game.