Specifically, the below list of things that may be worth worrying about more because they:

(a) could be more likely to impact you than you realize

(b) could have severe consequences if they do affect you

(c) are at least moderately preventable

My hope is that this post will help prevent at least one person’s life from being ruined by dangers they never even considered before.

Personal Dangers to Consider

(1) Repetitive Strain Injuries

If you are one of the many people who spend most of your day at a computer, then you are asking for trouble if you don’t use good form when typing. You may be typing 1000 hours a year, so even slight issues can compound into chronic injuries, which could be crippling to your work (at least temporarily, but in some cases, permanently).

How common it is: this paper [5] says that carpal tunnel has “a prevalence in the general adult population ranging from 2.7 to 5.8 percent”, but this is hard to interpret because carpal tunnel is not the only repetitive stress injury you can get from typing, and you can, of course, get carpal tunnel syndrome from other activities. This paper [15] studied bank workers in Brazil and found that the “estimated prevalence of clinically confirmed cases” was 22%, which is disturbingly high!

What to do about it: my understanding is that you should keep your keyboard at a height where your wrists are in a neutral (straight) position and comfortably relaxed (not flexed up or down). You also should avoid reaching across the keyboard while typing (use the left hand for the left half of the keys and the right hand for the right half). If you are a “hunt and peck” typist, you should strongly consider learning to touch type (there is plenty of software out there to teach you how, and it will raise your productivity). When typing, my understanding is that your elbows should be bent at roughly 90 degrees. If you start getting wrist, thumb, or hand pain while typing, take it seriously (especially if it lasts more than two days) and adjust your form, try a more ergonomic keyboard, take a couple of days off from using the computer, go to physical therapy, try doing wrist stretches designed for RSI periodically throughout the day, etc. You really don’t want to ignore it if it’s getting worse because it may become a chronic condition or dramatically harder to treat. If your work involves heavily using a computer, then your livelihood depends on the health of your wrists.

I once had a seemingly quite serious repetitive stress injury from typing, but thankfully after throwing every technique I could find at it (a special ergonomic hand separating keyboard [1], a vertical mouse [2], daily use of a special wrist strengthening device [3], splints while sleeping, physical therapy) it went away in six months or so. I have no idea which of these interventions helped, or if, perhaps, it was just time that helped. While it was happening, though, the RSI was painful, stress-inducing, and hurt my productivity. Don’t let it happen to you!

Another intervention you could try is switching to a Dvorak keyboard layout (with most computers, you can do this simply by switching software settings), which is designed to (theoretically at least) reduce the amount of finger movement needed and increase typing speed. The problem with Dvorak is that it takes quite a while to learn, and you’ll very likely eventually lose your ability to use the standard QWERTY layout that everyone else uses. A better alternative to Dvorak may be Colemak [16] since it’s designed to be easier and faster to learn and may have other advantages over Dvorak as well.

(2) Chronic Back Pain

Chronic back pain can significantly lower your quality of life. It’s simply a lot harder to enjoy the positives in life when in pain, and it’s harder to stay focused on whatever you’re doing. Back pain also can limit your behaviors a lot, for instance, preventing exercise or preventing you sitting or walking at length. It’s also absurdly common, especially lower back pain (perhaps due to a combination of the amount of time we spend sitting, the commonness of bad posture, and the physical structure of the back itself). Of course, back pain is also sometimes caused by impact injuries (e.g., car accidents, sports injuries, falling), but we’ll focus on work-related back pain here.

How common it is: this NIH article [6] says: “about 80 percent of adults experience low back pain at some point in their lifetimes. It is the most common cause of job-related disability and a leading contributor to missed workdays.” This article [15] claims that “nearly one in 10 people across the globe suffer from an aching lower back.”

What to do about it: first of all, get a good chair. I ended up experimenting with three over a period of years until I found one that was really perfect for me. I recommend trying out other people’s office chairs (ideally sitting in them while typing for at least 20 minutes) until you find one you love. Once you’ve found a good chair, make sure that you create a routine of sitting in it in a healthy position. As I understand it, your back should be supported by the back of the chair, and you shouldn’t be hunched or feel uncomfortable (consider a lumbar cushion [7] if your lower back is not well supported by the chair). Make sure your computer screen isn’t too low (e.g., buy a riser for it or stack it on something and consider an external keyboard and laptop stand for laptops). Ideally, you shouldn’t have to bend your neck down or hunch to any substantial degree to look at the screen. Don’t get in the habit of twisting your body or putting a leg up on your knee (put your feet back flat on the floor when you notice this happening – you also don’t want your feet to be dangling ideally). Stop for a moment and pay close attention to how your body feels when you are sitting in your chair. If you notice any tension, then find a way to sit more comfortably since you’ll probably be like that many hours every day. You also could consider getting a standing desk or adjustable desk (note though that you can still hurt yourself standing all day, so switching back and forth between standing and sitting is probably ideal – and if you do get a standing desk, consider getting a pad to stand on to make it less painful on your feet). When working, consider taking periodic breaks where you walk or stretch, as that might help as well. If you start to have back pain that lasts more than two days, take it seriously. See a doctor or physical therapist, do appropriate exercises or stretches daily, adjust your chair and posture, get a lumbar cushion, get a stand and external keyboard for your laptop, etc. You may want to consider buying a device [14] to remind you whenever you slouch. It’s best to build good sitting habits before it’s too late. One more thing to note: lifting excessively heavy objects can ruin your back in mere seconds. If something is really heavy, ask for help. If you really have to lift it, make sure to use your legs heavily in the lifting and not to lift from your back.

(3) Car Accidents

If you spend a lot of time in cars, then you should be concerned about car safety. Cars frequently ruin people’s lives.

How common are they: According to the CDC [8], if you are age 25 to 74, your base rate chance of dying due to a car accident in a single year is about 1 in 2500. Of course, some of these are deaths of pedestrians, bikers, etc. If a 1 in 2500 chance of death each year doesn’t scare you, then it’s worth noting that the injury rate from car accidents is dramatically higher than the death rate, more than 15x higher according to this article [9]. And even if you don’t injure yourself, you may kill or injure someone else when you’re driving (e.g., your passengers or pedestrians), which is also, of course, horrible.

What to do about it: here’s a very helpful article [10] by Michael Curzi summarizing things you can do to be safer when driving, but some of the main things from the article, and some from common sense, are:

(a) always wear your seatbelt (even at 25 miles an hour, an accident can mangle you pretty bad)

(b) don’t do anything distracting while driving (apparently, 25-50% of accidents have a distraction as the root cause)

(c) be extra careful on dark streets and at night in general (apparently, 49% of fatal crashes happen at night)

(d) also, be extra careful in bad weather such as rain and snow (apparently 75% of crashes involve wet pavement, and the first day it snows for the year is especially dangerous, perhaps because drivers haven’t adapted to it yet)

(e) don’t drive when you’ve been drinking or taking drugs because it can impair your judgment, slow down your reflexes, and distract you (plus the penalties if you get caught can be huge, and if you accidentally hurt someone while driving under the influence, you could face a criminal sentence even if the accident isn’t really your fault)

(f) don’t go above the speed limit except when it’s clearly safe to do so (the chance of dying goes up dramatically with higher-speed collisions)

(g) don’t drive when sleepy (ask someone else to drive instead, take a taxi or drink some caffeine).

(4) Medical Error

If you are hospitalized, or you are considering undergoing a serious procedure, you should be concerned about medical error and take the steps you can to prevent it.

How common it is: according to this article [11], medical error may be the third leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease and cancer. How crazy is that! Whether this is an exaggeration or not, who knows (clearly, it’s something that’s tricky to estimate), but the point is that the risk is a serious one.

What you can do about it:

(a) if you’re undergoing a procedure, be absolutely certain that they have correctly ID’d you and that they know exactly what they are operating on (including which side of the body and which body part) and what they are trying to accomplish

(b) when dealing with a very serious condition, pay up (if you can afford it) to go to a truly amazing doctor (your life may literally depend on it). When it’s sufficiently serious, it may be worth going off your insurance plan to find someone spectacular (at least to consult with, even if they won’t be carrying out your procedure).

(c) look at meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials on your own to double-check what your doctor says (e.g., using the Cochrane Library online and google scholar). If what you find contradicts your doctor’s recommendations, don’t immediately assume they are wrong, but they might be, so definitely show them what you found and see what they say. Doctors haven’t necessarily seen the latest studies, and it can take many years for evidence to percolate. There are still lots of surgeries performed annually where evidence suggests they are totally pointless (or even harmful).

(d) if you’re given medication at the hospital, double-check that it is what you’re supposed to be taking before taking it

(e) remember that nearly all hospital stays have an element of risk (e.g., you might pick up an infection or be given the wrong medication) so only stay at the hospital if it’s important to do so.

(f) remember that all surgery carries risk and can have complications, so weigh the costs and benefits carefully.

(g) before undergoing a medical procedure, talk to your doctor in detail about all the risks and what you can expect post-surgery in terms of recovery. I’ve found that doctors sometimes don’t tell you how bad recovery will be and will spring it on you with a “post-operative care” sheet after it’s already done.

(h) If you’re getting a procedure done, consider asking the doctor how many times they have done the procedure. If it’s small, find another doctor. If it’s large, ask the doctor how many times they’ve seen the different risks / serious complications occur in their patients.

(i) If they try to have a med student in training do a serious procedure on you, tell them bluntly that you would like the experienced doctor to do it instead.

(5) Suicide

People are not usually concerned about committing suicide because they assume that (a) they’d never do it themselves or (b) that even if they did do it, that would be their own well-reasoned choice, so it wouldn’t make sense to proactively prevent it. However, I think it’s quite unlikely that most people who commit suicide would have been able to predict five years earlier that they were going to do it, and suicide is often carried out very impulsively (rather than being a rational choice that is made). For instance, according to this article [12], 70% of people who attempt suicide and fail never attempt it again (of course, this includes some people who may not have been truly trying to kill themselves, but the point still stands that suicide is rarely a rational decision). One of the best reasons not to keep a gun is because you (or someone else in your house) might one day use it to impulsively commit suicide. The easier it is to commit suicide, the more likely you’ll be to do it, hence why guns are so problematic. As I understand it, societal shifts that make suicide harder are sometimes associated with large changes in suicide rates – even a minor extra inconvenience matters because of suicide’s frequently impulsive nature. Note that, according to this website [15], 25-34-year-olds in the U.S. are about 1.5 more likely to die from suicide than homicide, 45-54-year-olds are about four times more likely to from suicide than homicide, and 55-64-year-olds are more than six times more likely. People think that guns make the U.S. dangerous, and they are right, but what they don’t realize is that suicide is a far bigger problem than homicide.

How common it is: according to the CDC [13], in 2010 in the U.S., it was the 2nd great cause of death for 25-34-year-olds and the 4th highest for 35-54-year-olds.

What you can do about it: don’t keep a gun in your house. If you find yourself having frequent suicidal thoughts, and especially if you’ve begun to formulate a suicide plan (e.g., coming up with specific details), immediately tell someone that you fully trust and who can handle the situation well. Additionally, strongly consider seeing a well-trained psychologist who specializes in depression. Keep in mind that if they feel you are an immediate threat to yourself, they may have to take action. Please discuss this with them before you tell them about your suicidal thoughts. They won’t report you for merely asking about the rules they have to follow; then, you can decide whether you feel comfortable sharing your suicidal thoughts with them.

If you are on the verge of suicide, immediately call the national suicide preventions hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or chat with them online at http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org. If you are outside the U.S., you can use this list of hotlines: http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html. More generally, whether you are suicidal or not, you should take depression very seriously. Even though you may well feel hopeless about your depression (that’s a symptom of depression after all), the statistics say it usually is treatable. Please don’t let it ruin your life unnecessarily. Go to a therapist (I especially recommend someone whose specialty is CBT since it’s more evidence-based for depression than most other modalities. Even if you’ve tried therapy before, CBT is likely very different than what you’ve tried). Or go to a psychiatrist (if you prefer to try medicine-based options). If you’re very depressed, a combination of CBT (with a psychologist) plus antidepressants (with a psychiatrist) are your best bet to feeling better as fast as possible. If you don’t do either of those things, please at least read a book about depression that has lots of useful advice, such as Feeling Good (by David Burns). Note that if you have tried a few treatments before and none of them have worked, there are actually quite a large number of different depression treatments available, and it’s almost certain that you have not tried them all.

For instance, if you think that social issues are a major factor in your depression, consider trying Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). If you think that sleep problems are a major factor, go to a sleep doctor to see if you might have sleep apnea which could be causing it, or consider chronotherapy. If your depression is seasonal, consider trying a very bright SAD light in the morning. There are many useful things to try; this is just scratching the surface of your options.

(6) Injuries from Falling

People generally don’t consider just how dangerous and common falling is for older adults. It’s not just that falls can occasionally be deadly, but rather that they cause injuries that can land you in the hospital. Some people never recover from these injuries and are bedridden, crippled, or hospitalized for the rest of their lives.

How common it is: according to the CDC [16], older Americans experience about 29 million falls annually, leading to about 7 million injuries, and are a “leading cause of injury and death in older Americans.”

What you can do about it: first of all, you absolutely need to exercise. If you are not exercising at least twice a week (ideally, more than that), you are taking significant risks (not just from falls, but from a variety of health problems as well). Both cardio and weight-bearing exercise are important, and you really should be doing both. As people age, they tend to decline in both bone density and muscle mass (with injury rates from falls skyrocketing), so exercise becomes an important way to compensate. You should also probably be taking vitamin D3 supplements if you are over 65. This meta-analysis of eight randomized controlled trials [17] concludes that “High dose supplemental vitamin D [i.e., 700-1000 IU per day] reduced fall risk by 19%” but “falls were not notably reduced by low dose supplemental vitamin D [i.e., less than 700 IU per day].” You should also be sure that the shoes you wear regularly have a good grip on the bottom. Furthermore, you should be very careful walking around when it’s wet outside, especially when it’s icy, or when you’re carrying a lot of stuff. Finally, make sure that in your own home, there is nothing that can be tripped over.

Imagine throwing away a crumpled piece of paper in a waste bin. Now imagine doing it again, but assume this time that you set the goal of throwing it in from 6 feet away. As your tossed paper ball sails through the air, you may feel an edge of nervousness. When it falls into the bin, you may feel a small jolt of excitement. And if it lands short, some disappointment. In the end, it’s just a paper ball, but your goal imbued it with meaning for you.

The bright side of this psychological quirk is that we can hack it to make mundane things fun just by setting challenging goals all the time. Going for a bike ride to somewhere you bike often? Set the goal of noticing five interesting things along the way that you’ve never noticed before. Going to check out some coffee shops with friends? Set the goal of finding which one really truly has the best coffee. Doing some boring data entry? Set the goal of completing the most entries you can in 10 minutes, or finishing before a certain song ends.

Warning: there is a substantial dark side to goal setting.

Many of the video games people get addicted to are like the crack cocaine of goal achievement. In the real world, you don’t get to succeed at a seemingly-important goal every 5 to 30 minutes, but in video games you do, and we humans love it. Even worse, once you’re used to achieving goals so frequently, real-life can feel like garbage by comparison. Be very wary if the goals from your games (when you’re not currently playing) start seeming as important as the goals of real life.

While video games are an example of very rapid goal achievement, some goals can be extremely sticky, motivating us for years or decades to take action after action after action (e.g., people who set the goal of becoming a doctor when they are 15, and who may not end up finishing all their training until 14 years later).

What’s scary about this is that sometimes we are so focused on the goal that we forget why we set the goal in the first place. But, just as we don’t need a good reason to choose to throw a piece of paper in the trash from 6 feet away, and it’s still satisfying if we achieve it, our goals from years ago may not have been set for good reasons. Or maybe the reasons were good ones at the time, but not ones we currently endorse. Yet the goal doesn’t instantly disappear. Goals are independent entities, divorced from the causes that brought them into existence. And working toward a long-standing goal can easily become a default mode. Unless you force yourself to reevaluate the reasons behind it, a goal you’ve had for a long time will probably keep persisting even if it’s reasons no longer make sense to you.

Perhaps even worse, we buy into goals that others set for us, and then let these goals dictate our behavior. Sometimes these goals are broadcast to us by the culture we’re in (e.g. “popular=good”). In other cases, adults are still stuck chasing the goals that their parents gave them as children, even though these goals don’t align with their adult values.
Not having goals can also be a painful existential state. Goals are part of what makes life feel meaningful. So the solution is not to avoid them but to consciously create them.

Goals are powerful, useful, and dangerous. We should set small goals to give life more fun and meaning. In weightier areas, though, we have to set our goals very carefully, and not let others do it for us. We need to reevaluate the causes and value of our goals regularly. Otherwise, we may spend decades chasing goals long after we’ve forgotten their meaning.

Is it worth taking a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying , in order to experience the novel thrill of sky diving? Is a 1 in 500,000 chance of death worth it to go bungee jumping?

It’s hard to know whether these risks are reasonable, because numbers like 100,000 or 500,000 feel so abstract to us. To think more clearly about these numbers, it helps to get our intuitions engaged.

We can start by figuring out the daily risk of dying that we automatically face every day. My “death calculator” tool above will compute yours, as estimated from your gender and age. For instance, in the United States, a 30 year old man has about a 1 in 260,000 chance of dying tomorrow whereas a 30 year old woman has about a 1 in 583,000 chance. A 55 year old man has a 1 in 46,000 chance of dying on any given day and a 55 year old woman a 1 in 79,000 chance. Note that while it’s extremely difficult to estimate a person’s life span (since future technological and societal changes may radically alter how long people live), estimating how likely a person is to die in the next day is much more accurate and straightforward.

Once you’ve used the tool to calculate your own chance of dying tomorrow, you can start thinking about the risk of dangerous activities relative to how much risk you already take each day (merely by going about normal activities). In particular, you can calculate how many total days worth of risk an activity involves. So for instance, if you are a 30 year old male, and ride 100 miles on a motorcycle tomorrow, then you’ll experienced 11.2 days worth of risk of dying tomorrow, rather than a single normal day of risk.

To do the calculation of how many days of risk you’re taking in a day where you do the dangerous activity, simply calculate the following: Start with the probability that you die in a normal day, add to it the probability that you die from doing the risky activity, and then divide the result by the probability that you die in a normal day.

So for instance, if you were to go BASE jumping tomorrow (an activity that appears to have about a 1 in 2,300 chance of death), and if you normally have a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying in a given day (for instance, you’re a 46 year old man) then you’d be taking on ((1/2300)+(1/100000))/(1/100,000) = 44.5 days worth of ordinary daily risk tomorrow, instead of just 1 day of risk.

Would that be worth it? For some people, it might be possible it is worth BASE jumping once in their in life. But suppose you were to go BASE jumping 20 times over the next year, on 20 different days. Then rather than consuming 365 days of typical risk that year (as a 46 year old man), you’d be taking on about 1235 days worth of risk, an additional roughly 2.4 years of risk! It’s hard to imagine that being worth it, even if BASE jumping is incredibly enjoyable. Of course, there is also a high risk of injury, aside from the risk of death.

Below is a table with estimates of the chance of dying from doing various activities.

Taking a 340 mile road trip on occasion with friends seems very reasonable. For instance, a 30 year old male will only be doubling his risk of dying that day, and a 30 year old female will be taking on about 3.3 days of her usual daily risk. But taking a job as a taxi driver in a suburban area or a long distance courier, driving 340 miles most days, would be much more risky. A 30 year old male who took such a job would be doubling his risk of dying every day. Another way to think about it is that despite being a 30 year old male, he would living with the daily risk of a 43 year old male. Similarly, a 30 year old male who decided to go BASE jumping one day, would be living that day with the daily risk of death of an 88 year old man.

So what risks are worth taking? It’s ultimately a subjective question. But thinking in terms of how much you’re increasing your ordinary daily risk, and converting risks into the daily risk of people of different ages, can make these abstract numbers more intuitive. And stronger intuition can help us reason more sanely about our choices.

Disclaimer: these numbers come from the internet, so if you want to be confident about any of them, you should double check them using a reliable source. Note also that actual death rates will depend on a variety of factors, including the amount of experience you have doing that activity and the location where you are doing it. Furthermore, note that for many of these activities there are risks of injury, in addition to risk of death, but I’ve only considered risk of death in this analysis. Be very cautious before deciding to engage in any dangerous activity!