I’d say part of the problem lies with the responsibility to fix the potholes.
If I’m not wrong, the fixing of potholes falls under the councils (at least those potholes not in Motorways and such). And I’ll bet that each council has different budgets and priorities.
Sprinkle a bit of border arguments if a pothole happens to be between councils, and you’ve made yourself a nice plate of Not My ProblemTM!
I also wonder how much the population and area of Sydney affect this. Higher volume of cars degrades the road faster. Maybe we should use a measure of “potholes per capita” to be able to do an accurate comparison.
Since the calendar has already been mentioned, I’ll drop another of my tools.
I check my pockets every time I leave a space, and confirm I’ve got Wallet, Keys, Phone. I do this at any transition: Leaving the house, a taxi, the office, a plane.
Got kick started into the habit when I lost a big (for a kid) chunk of money. Felt so bad that I started the checks, and haven’t lost any of those three in many, many years (ง’̀-‘́)ง