Law & Governance · Project 8 of 12

The Rule Nobody Follows

How often a real rule is actually kept

Count how often one real rule near you is actually kept, then find out who pays for the breaking.

Six weeksNo equipment on the paper route 20 written stepsMarked out of 20Free forever
The question

How often is one real rule in a place you already belong actually followed, and who carries the cost, in minutes or rupees, when it is not?

A rule that most people break is not a small annoyance; it is a cost quietly moved onto whoever is least able to refuse it. Regulators, compliance teams, councils, unions and housing committees all live on the same two moves you make here: count how often a rule is actually followed, then find out who pays when it is not. Writing a rule that the people bound by it agreed to, can appeal against and can change is the whole difference between governance and an instruction nobody obeys, and that difference is paid work everywhere from a market committee to a national regulator.

Two acts. Find, then fix.

Every EAD project runs the same shape. The first act produces a number nobody in the room could previously state. The second act changes exactly one thing and proves whether that number moved.

Act 1 · Find
You pick one real rule in a place you already belong — a household, a shared room, a street, a sports ground, a bus queue — that most people break, and you count it: ten observation sessions across two weeks, always at the same time, in the same place, for the same fixed length, every instance tallied as followed or not followed. You then ask at least five people whom the breaking affects what it costs them in minutes, rupees, safety or fairness, and turn those answers into a figure per week.

A one-page costed problem statement carrying four lines: the rule written as an observable event, the compliance rate as a percentage with the number of instances behind it, who carries the cost of the breaking, and what that cost comes to per week. Beside it sits a bar chart of compliance per session and one line quoting, without naming anybody, what the people who pay actually said.

Act 2 · Fix
You draft a changed rule, put it to everybody it affects, and rewrite it until they agree — the signed sheet carries the rule, the way to change it, the way to appeal a decision under it, and the plain statement that anybody may leave the group at any time. You then count compliance for two more weeks under the identical method: same sessions, same times, same place, same length, same tally sheet, same counter.

The signed rule sheet, ten more sessions counted identically, the two compliance rates side by side as a bar chart with the instance count on each bar, the change in percentage points, the weekly cost recalculated, and a named list of confounders. Where the group refused the new rule, that refusal, its reasons and what it says about the original rule stand as the result and are written up as one.

What actually gets measured

The numbercompliance rate for one rule, as a percentage of observed instances, in percentage of observed instances
BeforeTen observation sessions across two weeks, each at the same time, in the same shared or public place, for the same fixed length, every instance tallied as followed or not followed by the same counter. The rate is instances followed divided by total instances, reported per session and as a two-week figure with the total instance count written beside it. Taken before anything is proposed to anybody.
AfterTen more sessions across two weeks, same times, same place, same length, same tally sheet, same counter and the same definition of an instance, beginning the day after the new rule is signed, reported per session and as a two-week figure beside the first.
The honest partA well-measured failure scores higher than an unmeasured success. If the number did not move, say so and explain why.

Every step, written out

Twenty steps in total — ten to find the number, ten to fix it. Pick the route that matches what your school actually has.

A clipboard, a ruled tally sheet and a watch produce the identical compliance rate; the rule sheet is one page passed round for objections and then for signatures, and the bars are drawn on squared paper to a stated scale.
You need: A clipboard and twenty identical tally sheets, each ruled into two columns headed followed and not followed, with date, place, start time and session length written at the top · A pen, and a spare, because a session missed for want of a pen cannot be repeated · A watch or clock with a second hand, or any household timer, so every session is exactly the same length · One page for the rule sheet carrying the rule, the way to change it, the way to appeal, the right to leave, and a signature and date line for every person affected · Squared paper and a ruler for the per-session bars and the paired before-and-after bars, drawn to a stated scale · An envelope, dated, holding the used tally sheets so anybody can recount your totals

  1. Find the rule

    40 minutes
    Pick one real rule in a place you already belong that most people break, and write it as something a stranger could observe.
    • List five rules you already live under: at home, in a shared room, on your street, at a ground, in a queue.
    • Cross out any rule you cannot watch from a shared or public place, and any that would mean watching one particular person.
    • Write the survivor at the top of a fresh page in one sentence: the rule is X, one instance is Y, and an instance counts as followed when Z.
    • Find out whether it is written anywhere, and copy the written version onto the page; where it exists only as something people say, write down who says it and when it started, as far as anybody can tell.
    • Ask three people who live under it whether they knew it existed, and write down all three answers.
    Write down: The rule in one sentence, the definition of one instance, whether it is written down anywhere, and three people's answers on whether they knew of it.
    Finished when: Somebody who has never been to the place reads your sentence and says correctly whether a described instance followed the rule.
    Commonest mistake: Choosing a rule about one person you find annoying. That is a complaint, not a rule — pick something that happens many times a day to many people.

  2. Define the count

    45 minutes
    Fix the time, the place, the session length and the counting rule, then run one pilot session.
    • Choose one fixed time of day and one fixed shared or public place where instances happen often enough to count.
    • Choose a fixed session length between ten and thirty minutes and write it down; every session from now on is exactly that long.
    • Rule twenty tally sheets in advance, each headed with the place, the session length and a blank date, two columns only: followed, not followed.
    • Run one pilot session with a watch, and write 'pilot' across that sheet so it never enters the ten.
    • Write the edge cases the pilot exposed — an instance half-done, two at once, one you could not see clearly — and fix the answer to each before session one.
    Write down: The fixed time, place and session length, the edge-case rules, and the pilot sheet marked as a pilot.
    Finished when: The pilot sheet exists, the edge-case rules are written, and ten blank headed sheets sit on the clipboard.
    Commonest mistake: Counting for as long as it stays interesting. Sessions of unequal length cannot be compared, so watch the clock and stop when the time is up.

  3. Count ten sessions

    20 minutes a day across two weeks
    Run ten identical observation sessions and tally every instance.
    • Turn up at the same time and the same place for every session, and start counting when the watch says so, not before.
    • Mark one stroke in followed or not followed for every instance, and nothing else — no names, no descriptions, no sketches of people.
    • Total both columns at the foot of the sheet before you leave, and work out the rate longhand in the margin.
    • Where a session could not happen, write the date and the reason in the failure log rather than moving that session to another time.
    • Where anybody asks what you are doing, say plainly that you are counting how often a rule is followed for a project, and stop if they ask you to.
    Write down: Ten sheets with date, start time, both totals and the rate, plus a failure-log line for every session that went wrong.
    Finished when: Ten sheets of identical length sit in the envelope, each with a total instance count beside its rate, and no sheet identifies a person.
    Commonest mistake: Counting harder on the days you expect breaking. The count has to be blind to what you hope for, so keep the time, the place and the length fixed even when it is dull.

  4. Ask who pays

    60 minutes
    Find out who carries the cost of the breaking, and in what.
    • List everybody the breaking affects: whoever clears up, whoever waits, whoever pays, whoever is made less safe.
    • Write five questions on a card — minutes lost, rupees spent, something made less safe, something made less fair, and one line in their own words — and take no names.
    • Ask at least five of them face to face and write each answer on its own slip, numbered rather than named.
    • Where the cost is minutes, time it yourself once with a watch rather than trusting the estimate.
    • Write down anybody who says it costs them nothing, because that answer matters as much as the rest.
    Write down: Five or more numbered answers giving the cost in minutes, rupees or a stated harm, and at least one cost you timed yourself.
    Finished when: You can name who pays for the breaking without naming a person, and there is a figure or a timed measurement behind it.
    Commonest mistake: Asking only the people who complain. Ask the people who break the rule what it costs them to follow it, or your changed rule will fail for a reason you never saw coming.

  5. Price the breaking

    45 minutes
    Turn the compliance rate and the answers into a cost per week.
    • Multiply instances not followed per session by the number of sessions in a week, longhand, to get instances not followed per week.
    • Multiply that by the minutes or the rupees one instance costs, taken from the slips and from your own timing, leaving the working visible.
    • Where the cost is safety or fairness rather than money, write it as a count of instances plus one sentence in the words the affected people used, and do not invent a rupee figure for it.
    • Draw the per-session compliance bars on squared paper to a stated scale, with the two-week rate ruled across as a line.
    • Write the limits: how many instances you saw in total, how many you might have missed, and what a different hour of the day would probably have shown.
    Write down: Instances not followed per week, the cost per week in minutes or rupees, the per-session compliance bars, and the stated limits.
    Finished when: You can say one sentence aloud: the rule is followed X per cent of the time, and the breaking costs whoever pays Y a week.
    Commonest mistake: Putting a rupee figure on unfairness because a number looks stronger. Count what you counted, and say in words what you could not.

  6. Name the cost

    60 minutes
    Finish the costed problem statement and draft the changed rule everybody will be asked to agree to.
    • Write four lines: the rule, the compliance rate with the instance count behind it, who carries the cost, and the cost per week.
    • List three candidate changes — make the rule easier to follow, move where or when it applies, change what it asks for, or drop it because nobody ever consented to it — with what each would need from whom.
    • Draft the changed rule on one page: the rule, why it exists, how to change it, how to appeal a decision under it, and the sentence that anybody may leave this group at any time.
    • Check the draft against the hard line: it may not punish, shame, exclude, fine or cost anybody money, and it may not name a person. Rewrite anything that does.
    • Write the prediction at the foot of the page and date it: compliance will move from A per cent to B per cent across two weeks.
    Write down: The one-page costed problem statement, the three candidate changes, the drafted rule sheet, and the dated prediction.
    Finished when: Somebody who was not there reads the page once and repeats your compliance rate and the weekly cost back correctly, and the draft breaks none of the four bans.
    Commonest mistake: Writing the rule you want rather than the rule people will agree to. A rule imposed is obeyed for two weeks and ignored for ever after.

  7. Agree the rule

    50 minutes
    Put the draft to everybody it affects, rewrite it until they agree, and get it signed.
    • Read the draft aloud to everybody affected, in one sitting where you can, and ask each of them for one objection.
    • Write every objection on the back of the page, then rewrite the rule to answer at least one of them and read the new version aloud.
    • Copy the final version out cleanly with a signature and date line for each person, and record how many declined as a number, without naming any of them and without pressing anybody for a reason.
    • Say aloud, and write on the sheet, that anybody may ask to change it, may appeal a decision under it, and may leave the group at any time.
    • Pin the signed sheet where the rule applies and keep the drafts, objections and all, in the envelope.
    Write down: The signed rule sheet, the objections written on the back of the draft and what each one changed, and the number of people who declined.
    Finished when: Everybody affected has either signed or declined on the record, and at least one objection visibly changed the wording.
    Commonest mistake: Counting silence as agreement. Somebody who did not answer has not consented, and where the group as a whole refuses, that refusal is your finding and you write it up as one rather than coming back with a softer version.

  8. Count week one

    20 minutes a day across one week
    Run five sessions under the new rule, changing nothing about how you count.
    • Keep the same time, the same place, the same session length, the same headed sheets and the same counter.
    • Count five sessions and total both columns at the foot of each sheet before you leave.
    • Write down every occasion the rule was not kept as a situation, never as a person.
    • Ask two people on day seven whether the new rule is workable, and write their answers word for word without naming them.
    • Do not remind anybody of the rule during a session; a count you influenced is not a count.
    Write down: Five sheets with both totals and the rate, plus a dated failure entry for every session that did not go to plan.
    Finished when: Five identical sheets sit in the second envelope and the failure log holds at least one honest entry.
    Commonest mistake: Standing somewhere new so people notice you counting. Stand where you stood in the baseline, doing exactly what you did then, or the two fortnights are not comparable.

  9. Count week two

    20 minutes a day across one week, plus 45 minutes
    Finish the ten sessions and compare the two fortnights honestly.
    • Run the last five sessions with nothing altered.
    • Add the ten sheets, work out the second fortnight's rate longhand, and set it beside the first in percentage points with the instance count behind each.
    • Draw the two rates as a pair of bars on squared paper to a stated scale, writing the instance count on each bar.
    • Recalculate the cost per week at the new rate and write the difference in minutes or rupees.
    • List every confounder: a holiday, an examination week, the weather, a new person in the group, the fact that people knew they were being counted, and the fact that you asked them to sign something.
    Write down: The paired before-and-after bars, the change in percentage points, the recalculated weekly cost, and the named confounder list.
    Finished when: You can state the before rate, the after rate, the instance count behind both, and at least two reasons the difference might not be your doing.
    Commonest mistake: Reporting a rate without its denominator. Eighty per cent of five instances and eighty per cent of two hundred are not the same finding, so put the instance count on every bar.

  10. Share and reflect

    60 minutes
    Publish the finding, defend it to the people it affects, and record what happens to the rule now.
    • Deliver the defence aloud in under three minutes to three people who sign and date the page, or record it on a borrowed phone.
    • Read every page for anything that identifies a person and cross it out before the pages leave your hand.
    • Read the one-page explainer to three people the breaking costs, and write down what each of them said.
    • Hand or post the bar chart to the expert you interviewed with one question: what would you have written into the rule that I did not.
    • Ask the group in front of a witness whether the rule stays, changes again or ends, and write the answer down word for word.
    Write down: The defence, signed and dated by its witnesses, the one-page explainer, the group's recorded decision on the rule, and the relations ledger holding ten relationships.
    Finished when: Ten relationships are logged with dates and replies, nothing identifying a person survives on the shared pages, and the group has said on record what happens to the rule.
    Commonest mistake: Calling it a success because the rate went up. Say who still pays at the new rate, and by how much, before you say anything else.

What the student hands in

Nine pieces. Together they are the folder a parent can sit down and read.

1. Question cardOne card naming the rule, the place, the fixed session time and length, and the question: what share of instances actually follow this rule, and who carries the cost of the ones that do not.
2. Expert interview packFive written questions for a lawyer, councillor, school administrator, union representative or community organiser, your compliance rate attached as one page, the date and channel of the request, and the reply written word for word.
3. Evidence logTwenty dated tally sheets or rows with start times, session lengths and both counts, the cost answers numbered rather than named, the timed cost you measured yourself, and the signed rule sheet with its objections.
4. Failure logThe sessions that did not happen and why, the instances you could not judge, the day the definition was tightened, anybody who asked you to stop counting, and what each did to the rate, dated.
5. The buildThe signed rule sheet itself: the rule, the reason, how to change it, how to appeal, the right to leave, and the signatures, plus the paired before-and-after compliance chart with instance counts.
6. One-page explainerOne page read in ninety seconds: the rule, the baseline compliance rate, who pays and how much per week, the agreed change, the two-week result, and what ten sessions cannot tell anybody.
7. Identity cardA name and a one-line promise for the rule sheet, so the group refers to it by name rather than by whose idea it was, plus the sentence you want repeated afterwards.
8. Relations ledgerTen names with dates and replies: one lawyer, councillor, administrator or organiser, three people the breaking costs, three peers who checked your counting method, and three people you sent the chart to who replied.
9. Defence videoUnder three minutes on camera: the rule, the baseline rate and its instance count, who paid and how much, the agreed change, the after rate, and the limits you accept. Nobody identifiable on screen.

The expert they have to find

Ten logged relationships are required before this project can be marked. One of them is an expert, and this is who.

A lawyer, a union representative, an elected councillor or union-council member, a school administrator who writes and enforces rules, or a community organiser who has got neighbours to agree to something — anybody whose work is making rules that people actually follow.

How to find one

District and union-council offices hold public hours; ask at the desk for whoever handles local complaints. Bar associations publish member lists, and most lawyers will answer one short, specific question. A school administrator is usually reachable through the school office in the first hour of the day. Search LinkedIn for 'community organiser' or 'compliance officer' plus your city, and any housing-society or market-committee secretary has spent years enforcing rules with no power to punish.

What to say

Hello, my name is [name]. I counted how often one rule near me is actually followed, and the rate is far lower than anyone expected. I now have to draft a version people will agree to. Could you spare fifteen minutes this week to tell me what makes a rule stick? I will send five questions first.

What to ask

  • When you write a rule, how do you decide who counts as affected and therefore gets a say in it?
  • What makes people follow a rule they did not want, and what makes them ignore one they did?
  • How do you build a way to appeal into a small rule without turning it into a court?
  • What do you do when the people bound by a rule refuse to agree to it?
  • If you had my ten sessions of counts, what would you have measured that I did not?

The defence

Eight of the twenty marks. A student who cannot answer these has not finished, however good the artefact is.

  • Would compliance have risen anyway without your change, and how do you know?
  • You counted at one hour of the day in one place. What would a different hour have shown, and why should I believe your rate?
  • Whose consent did you not get, and what does that do to the legitimacy of the rule you wrote?
  • Your new rule carries no punishment. Tell me why it worked, or why it did not, without using the word discipline.

How far a student can take it

starterYou define one rule as an observable event, count ten identical sessions, ask five affected people what the breaking costs them, produce a compliance chart, and question one stranger who writes rules for a living.
practitionerYou choose your own observation window and defend the choice, cite any borrowed tally or survey method to its source, and produce one chart a stranger reads correctly without you explaining what an instance is.
researcherYou write the definition of an instance and the counting rule before session one, justify ten sessions rather than three, and quantify how many instances you probably missed and which way that biases the rate.
contributorYou set your compliance figure against published work on rule compliance and consent, defend your method to a lawyer or councillor who disagrees, and publish the anonymised tally sheets openly so anybody can recount them.

If you want to go further

Count the same rule in a second place with a different group, using the identical definition and session length, and set the two compliance rates side by side with both instance counts shown.

When it goes wrong

  • If nobody replies to your interview requests - then stop writing and go to your union-council or district office during its public hours and ask whoever is at the desk two questions about a rule they have to enforce.
  • If your before and after look the same - then report that as the finding, check whether everybody affected actually knew the new rule existed, and count how many of the signatures belong to people who are ever present during a session.
  • If you cannot count the instances - then narrow the definition to a version you can see clearly from one fixed spot, shorten the session, and state the definition and the session length on every chart.
  • If you run out of time - then keep both halves at the same number of sessions and cut the cost survey to three answers rather than five, writing on the page what you shortened and why.

Before you start

Safety and consent.
  • You count in shared or public places only — a shared room, a corridor, a street, a queue, a ground. Never observe anybody in a private space: not through a window, not in a bedroom or a bathroom, not in a home you were not invited into, and never on a camera, a photograph or a recording of any kind.
  • Observation is counting, not policing. You never confront, correct, warn or film a person breaking the rule, and you never wait somewhere in order to catch somebody. Where anybody asks what you are doing, tell them plainly, and stop counting if they ask you to.
  • No named complaints, ever. Every note describes a situation and never a person — the bin was left out overnight, two people went ahead of the queue — not by name, not by description, not by relationship, not by where they sit. Anything already written that identifies somebody is crossed out before the page leaves your hand.
  • The new rule may not punish, shame, exclude, fine or cost anybody money, and it may not name a single person. It must carry a way to change it, a way to appeal a decision under it, and the plain sentence that anybody may leave the group at any time. Where everybody affected does not agree to it, it is not written into force: the refusal is the result and you write it up as one.

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The other eleven

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