Pop Quiz: OSHA Top 10

Here’s a challenge for you: write down a top 10 list in under a minute. It could be any top 10 —your 10 favorite songs, movies, baby names—anything you feel like listing.

Whatever it is, I bet you can’t finish it in less than 60 seconds.

I tried this out myself with a pen, paper, and a timer. It took me a full 2 minutes and 20 seconds to come up with a list of my top 10 favorite candy products:

This should have taken me, like, 30 seconds—I love candy. But I stalled out around number 7, went blank, and ended up including some pretty questionable choices. I mean, Laffy Taffy? PayDay bars? No offense if those are your favorites, but they sure aren’t mine.

Like I said, challenging! Evidently, we’re only able to hold 7 items in our working memory, which explains why I hit a wall after Starburst.

But this is candy. When lives are at stake, we can’t afford to let the limits of cognition get in the way. And there’s one 10-item list every health and safety professional should commit to memory.

I’m referring, of course, to the OSHA Top 10. If your job is to keep people safe and keep your organization out of trouble, you need to be thoroughly familiar with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s 10 most frequently cited standards. Given their enormous human and financial costs, you can’t afford to forget about any of the items on the OSHA Top 10.