New trad climber self consciousness and questions

I find outdoor and trad climbing appealing precisely because it requires careful consideration of risk and a robust self consciousness. My advice for a person getting into outdoor climbing and or trad climbing is to ask and answer some basic questions before diving head first. Some good questions off the top of my head are below. For newbies and experienced climbers and everyone inbetween: add more good questions or answer questions. Are these questions relevant and how? Comment, criticize, ect.

Do you have experience analyzing critical risk and safety systems? How well do you know your self - your thought patterns and decision making tendencies? How well do you pay attention to critical detail? How do you best learn? What are your strengths and weaknesses and how do they relate to climbing outdoors? What are your goals, timeline and how does that affect risk?

Climb safe, have fun.

Questions sound like a job interview and are unnecessary for climbing.

"Climb safe and have fun" sounds good.

Frank, its the climb safe part that new climbers may have trouble with. Straight forward questions may help. 

They also sound like great questions to ask yourself if you are concerned with staying alive in dangerous situations. All of that stuff is implicit under "climb safe", but it's definitely worth spelling out. People don't tend to think about these things explicitly (I know I did not when I was 17-18 and getting into this sport).

Alexander - I did not have a grasp of these things at that age either and I think young folks can learn earlier if they are exposed to these types of questions.

Martin - what rocket science and climbing have in common is risk analysis

Edit:  deleted "thus the questions"

Every climber, at every level, regardless of the type of climbing, has to evaluate all these issues in some form or another.  Take the person out, have the follow, and see if they like fiddling with the gear.

Lots of folks teach themselves to trad climb. I kinda think a set of good straight forward questions (mine or others) that new outdoor climbers could easily access could help the future community as a whole by illuminating the advantages of risk analysis and self consciousness in climbing.  

Anyone?

The ones who didn't ask are already dead, or older.

All of those are valid questions, but are best considered on the ground.

Most do it unconsciously as (for most, imo) despite ego a little voice tells them if they have the aptitude or not. Fear is a great teacher and leads to introspection.

And the idea once off the ground is to do it without over-thinking or you will never get up anything because the only way to truly safely climb is to stay on the ground.

Haha. Good point HB. This type of introspection has no place on the rock.

Answers to these questions can have practical effects on the rock though. For example I am not very good with critical detail and I know that so every time I tie in or build an anchor etc I force myself to slow down, focus and double check. I also know that I respond strongly to adrenaline (I get bold) so I manage that aspect purposefully and thoughtfully by planning ahead of time so as not to do stupid shit.

bttrrtRock Charles wrote: Haha. Good point HB. This type of introspection has no place on the rock.

Answers to these questions can have practical effects on the rock though. For example I am not very good with critical detail and I know that so every time I tie in or build an anchor etc I force myself to slow down, focus and double check. I also know that I respond strongly to adrenaline (I get bold) so I manage that aspect purposefully and thoughtfully by planning ahead of time so as not to do stupid shit.

Yep, totally reasonable.

The ideal trad lead is a moment of Zen nothingness however. The cams and nuts drop in without conscious thought as you flow.