Writing a runbook is a declaration of temporary failure.

The act of writing a runbook is the incantation to a dark, forbidden contract with the better angels of our nature. It is a promise to do the right thing in the future, but not now. Right now, we're going to do the evil thing: write a runbook.

How often do we go back and do the right thing?

Rarely.

How many of these promises do we break?

A lot of them.

An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.

If you have runbooks, consider them as backlog tasks. Try not to add to their numbers. Failure begets runbooks; runbooks beget runbooks; and runbooks beget failure.