A Watch for a Messy World

I like watches. You might call me an enthusiast; my wife is a bit more blunt and calls me a hoarder (a box full of watches does not help my case). Given that I don’t work for a Fortune 500 company, I don’t collect Rolexes, Omegas, Breitlings, and similar watches. Instead, my box has Seikos, Citizens, and quite a few inexpensive foreign brands. However, I want to discuss one watch in particular – the one shown above in the picture. My father’s watch.

Of all the watches I own, this is without a doubt the most valuable to me. As you might guess, it’s the emotional value that trumps all my other watches, and has nothing to do with the fact that it’s a vintage watch. But more than that, the watch recently reminded me of an important lesson.

You may remember that my parents immigrated to the US from the Netherlands in 1950. My father started working at a low-paying hardware store but eventually landed a job doing the engineering he loved, which paid considerably more. Based on the watch being manufactured in 1954, I imagine that’s when he bought it. I bet Dad needed to do a lot of talking for Mom to agree to this purchase.

I remember my father’s watch as a small child. I remember seeing the watch on his arm when he’d throw me up in the air and catch me. It was there when I’d sit on his lap at night and he’d read me stories. The watch represents many wonderful memories for me, so when my sister found it last year (70 years later!), I was enthusiastic, and she was kind enough to let me add it to my collection. Not surprisingly, the watch did not run well, and I finally got around to sending it to a watch repair shop late last year.

The watch shop did a good job, and it now runs, but it’s not what I’d call particularly accurate. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when I inquired about the accuracy, the watchmaker emailed back that, “Bulova watches were great movements, but they didn’t keep time as well as railroad grade watches or other high-end luxury watches.” I think that was code for saying I needed to adjust my expectations about the watch’s accuracy.

Never one to be satisfied, the Jorritsma Watch Experiment of 2025 began. I tested the watch in different positions, since a mechanical watch may run faster or slower when oriented in a certain way (this is due to the gears, springs, and other mechanical parts being influenced by gravity). I tested its accuracy in six different positions, and there was quite a lot of variation. I was not particularly happy, but it seemed there wasn’t much I could do about it. It finally occurred to me that I should just wear it for a day and see how much the seconds varied. After all, that was the point of getting the watch running again – to wear it.

What do you suppose happened? It ran more accurately, in fact, dramatically more accurately than in any of the other static positions I had tried. In other words, the combination of all these various watch positions during the day on my wrist essentially averaged out, and the watchmaker had optimized it for actually wearing the watch.

In trying to gauge the watch’s accuracy in all those static positions, I was putting it into unrealistic environments. I was essentially assuming that the watch would exist in some sort of controlled test environment instead of functioning as it was intended.

That may be an interesting story, but what’s the takeaway? We sometimes do the same thing with public policy, and indeed, many other aspects of our lives. We see things from a clinical viewpoint, but that’s a problem, because the world is a messy place. Things don’t turn out as planned, people don’t react as expected, and the law of unintended consequences is always ready to disrupt the most well-crafted plans.

It’s easy for us to believe that making law X will result in Y. In reality, it will often result in action Z, so you will need to go back and correct law X to fix the problem, and now the fix creates an additional problem W upstream. Even more, sometimes you discover that we no longer need to create effect Y because some other law now already does that. Yes, it can be frustrating, but that’s how it works. Public policy in no way resembles a straight line.

I try to remind myself of this fact, particularly during legislative sessions. Humans are very creative at finding ways around laws, and those of us who operate in the public policy world have to anticipate this, but also to some degree accept it. Laws are made for the real world, just as a 1954 Bulova watch was made to be worn in the real world. My father lived in the messy world, just as I do. I’ll try and remember that, Dad. Besides, now your watch runs only a couple of seconds fast, and I’m pretty sure I can find a way to live with that.