The Checklist Manifesto
I recently finished the relatively small morsel that is Atul Gawabe’s The Checklist Manifesto. Audiobooks are fun!
The Checklist Manifesto is a doctor’s exploration of unexpected ways we can cope with complexity in an increasingly complex world. Gawabe leads in by talking about the challenges that keeping track of a large set of relatively mundane tasks when we’re beset by complexity, especially in the context of his home discipline: medicine. He talks about patients he and other experienced surgeons have nearly lost because of avoidable complications and screw-ups in mundane stuff. It’s … a bit scary, in that regard. That leads to his thesis: that in a complex world, a well-crafted checklist, well-implemented, can be a huge boon.
He talks about the aviation origins of the checklist, and how modern pre-flight procedures in commercial airlines evolved from those origins. Explores the use of checklists in other fairly mundane but inherently complex trades, particularly construction and civil engineering, and then talks about application of the theory to less mundane things, particularly investing.
As a result of reading this book, I’ve sort of integrated its ideas a bit into my own work. Not going to get into it too much here, but … there’s a lot of things in my own life that work out better if I at least stop and take inventory of what I need to do before I start.
Blaargh, there’s more to say about it, but I’m not going to. Just read (or listen to) it, it’s good!