Workplace Awareness - Introducing SafeMap

 

I’ve never been good at studying “the right way.”

Textbooks overwhelmed me.
Writing/Reading long notes drained me.
Memorization schedules, and last-minute cramming never really worked.

For a long time, I thought the problem was discipline.

It wasn’t.

 



So I adapted.

From high school's final year through tertiary education, I relied heavily on past papers and the scarce Q&A-style books – Georgian, ‘C. Muturi’, etc. Not because they were popular, but because they gave me something textbooks didn’t: direction.

Starting with questions helped me see:

- What actually mattered

- How concepts were applied

- Why certain topics kept showing up

That single shift quietly moved me from an average student in my final year of high school to above average KCSE results, especially coming from a less-renowned district day secondary school.

In 2021, this approach helped me rank among top GMAT performers in Africa, opening doors for a merit-based Masters Degree Sponsorship in a Top-Ranked US university – plans halted by the pandemic.

*The method I stumbled into has a name: SQ3R & Active Recall*

SQ3R stands for:
Survey. Question. Read. Recite. Review.

At its core, it’s active recall – forcing the brain to retrieve information instead of passively rereading it.

Research consistently shows:

Active recall improves long-term retention by 30–50% compared to rereading

Memory strengthens through effort, not exposure

William James captured it simply:
“The greatest enemy of memory is passivity.”

This, experts say, matters, especially for people who struggle with traditional study styles.

Because if you don’t start with questions, your brain doesn’t know what to hold onto.

*What this taught me about workplaces*

Like many people, I didn’t know - or care - about simple things:

- Emergency procedures and assembly points

- Organizational structure and escalation paths

- How information flows

- What “normal” actually looks like

Yet, I was just across the street during the Dusit Nairobi attack. I heard the commotion and realized how quickly normal can turn into uncertainty.

Around the same time, following the Garissa University attack, all students across Kenya schools were expected to be prepared – whether for drills or a real incident. At the time, it felt like overkill. Now, I see how vital that mindset was.

Being more safety- and security-conscious today, I understand that knowing these “simple things” is often the difference between:

- Order and chaos

- Early action and delayed response

- Containment and escalation

Simply put, you don’t rise to the occasion in a crisis. You fall back on what you understand.

Thus, I suppose every safety- and security-conscious organization should adopt Q&A-style training (or what I call SafeMap) during induction and periodic reviews.

Try SafeMap Prototype here