Hit invoice number 1,000 and my template finally snapped

I run a small bookkeeping service for restaurants and last Tuesday I sent out invoice number 1,000, which felt like a real milestone. Then I noticed my payment reminder email had the wrong link to the portal, something I'd been copying for months without checking. Three clients called me within an hour asking why they couldn't pay, and one said, "You've done this 999 times before, right?" It was funny in a tragic way, but it also forced me to build a checklist for every send. Has anyone else hit a big number like that and immediately found a stupid mistake you'd been repeating the whole time?

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the_leo1mo ago

There's something about repetition that just puts your brain to sleep, right? You do the same thing 999 times and your eyes stop seeing it. I've noticed this with everything from driving the same route to work (missed my exit twice last month) to typing my own phone number (wrote it wrong on a form after 10 years of it being the same). The weird part is the more routine something gets, the more sure you are it's fine, which is exactly when it's not. A checklist is smart, your brain can't be trusted with boring stuff.

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