I was chatting with my colleagues this morning about the psychological phenomenon of task fixation, when you become so focused on getting something done that you miss other important information in the scenario. A classic example is getting money from an ATM. People go to withdraw cash and they often walked away leaving their bank card behind. As a solution, banks started returning the card first and then giving the cash – a small change from their end but one that probably saved them a lot of hassle dealing with “lost card” issues.

Embarrassingly, we found another example this afternoon. Somehow, two of us conspired to take in a Windows 11 machine for a Windows 11 upgrade! The customer turned up much later than expected and, since almost everyone turns up with a Windows 10 machine, it wasn’t something we were looking for. We also spotted a problem with how the machine connected to the network and took steps to ensure that it linked up so we could ensure that OneDrive was properly synced and all her data was safe.

And that is how we ended up taking in a machine that didn’t need upgrading to a new operating system and creating another example of task fixation!