We face an onslaught of “helpful” reminders these days. Reminders programmed into autonomous systems there’s usually no way to disable.

Most recently I noticed a reminder to “Check the Back Seat” that appeared when I turned off my rental car.  This is a Bad Thing.  For one, it’s a waste of a fraction of my attention.  Why do I need to be reminded of this?  What is it some design and engineering team thought I might leave in my back seat so frequently that it merits a message every time I shut off the car?  If I’m in a crime-prone area, I better be smart enough not to leave valuables in lying around in my backseat.  If I’m parking in my own driveway, so what if I forget?  I’ll come back and get whatever it was I forget.

This message isn’t in itself an important thing.  My worry is that these ubiquitous messages breed carelessness and laziness.  At best, they waste a moment of our attention.  At worst, they foster complacency: I don’t need to remember basic obvious things, because some device will remind me.

As it turns out, I have a good habit of checking the seat and floor of a taxi every time I leave one.  This saved my a huge headache on a recent trip.  My cell phone had fallen out of my pocket and I didn’t leave it in the cab, because I checked.  I have this habit, because I trained myself to do it as a kid, growing up in New York City, when I took cabs pretty regularly and it was highly unlikely you’d ever get anything you left in the back seat of a cab back.

It’s worth training ourselves on little habits like this, in life and in work.  To that end, we ought to resist the proliferation of these useless nannying messages.  And as managers and leaders, as designers and engineers, we ought to think carefully before establishing and propagating automatic designs that belabor the obvious or highlight the trivial.

We are, after all, thinking and competent agents.  Taking accountability for ourselves in small ways—and large ones—is a Good Thing.

-Chris