Post-Incident Processing

Background

When a problem happens in daily life, everyone reacts and deals with it in the moment
But preparing beforehand, and reflecting afterward once it’s resolved, tend to get neglected
This post organizes a way of thinking that turns what happened into a lasting lesson, instead of letting it fade away

Problems can be split into two types based on where the cause lies.

Problems you directly caused
- Problems where your own mistake or judgment was the direct cause
Problems that originated from someone else
- Problems where something outside you (another person, the environment, a system) happened and ended up affecting you

Dealing with a problem can be split into three phases along the timeline.

Phase	Content
Prevention	Taking action before the problem happens
In-the-moment response	Responding on the spot while the problem is happening
Post-incident review	Reflecting and preventing recurrence after the problem has settled

People react strongly and take action the moment a problem occurs
But prevention for a problem that hasn’t happened yet rarely gets prioritized, and tends to be put off
Once the in-the-moment response is over and the problem has settled, people feel satisfied, and the post-incident review (reflection, recording, prevention) tends to be left undone
As a result, similar problems keep happening again and again in different forms

A framework of four questions for making sure post-incident review doesn’t get skipped
Named 4R after its four items
Based on the After Action Review (AAR), a method established in US Army training doctrine
- AAR is built around four questions: “What was supposed to happen?”, “What actually happened?”, “Why was there a difference?”, “What can we learn from it?”
- The 4R here reworks that into four items for handling everyday problems after the fact

#	Item	Question
1	Report	What happened?
2	Reason	Why did it happen?
3	Respond	How did you respond?
4	Prevent Recurrence	How will you prevent it from happening again?

4R Framework

Dig into the cause behind the facts written in Report
For a problem you caused, reflect on your own judgment or actions; for a problem that originated from someone else, reflect on the assumptions or systems you were relying on

Record what you actually did while the problem was happening
Also reflect on whether that response was appropriate, or whether there could have been a better one

Decide what to change going forward, so the same problem doesn’t repeat
If there’s something that can be turned into a concrete preventive measure, translate it into a specific action here

Keeping the 4R as a single set makes it easy to look back later and see, at a glance, when something happened, what happened, why it happened, how you responded, and what you did for the future
Keeping a proper log even after the 4R is resolved turns the problem into a reusable lesson, instead of letting it end as a one-off, glossed-over response
Prevention is hard to fix structurally, but post-incident review can be covered by a habit — the habit of writing the 4R

Problems can be organized along two axes: cause (yourself / someone else) and timing (before / during / after)
People handle the in-the-moment response, but tend to neglect both prevention and post-incident review
Logging the post-incident review as a 4R (Report / Reason / Respond / Prevent Recurrence) turns problems into lasting lessons instead of letting them get glossed over