The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #39: Nonfiction recommended by a friend)
2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Library Love Challenge
The Reason
A physician friend recommended this book to me more than 10 years ago. It was available on audiobook when I browsed my library’s catalog so I thought I should finally read it since it’s been on my TBR long enough!
The Quotes
“We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.”
“One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.”
“There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
The Narrator(s)
John Bedford Lloyd. It was great! He was clear and precise, and easy to follow.
My Thoughts
I thought it was cool that a whole book was dedicated to the importance of having checklists. For the regular layperson like me, checklists are usually just part of the tools I use for convenience and keeping myself organized, and it has also saved me some stress many times, but in aviation, construction, and medicine, it can be the difference between life and death. I think checklists are worth implementing in any situation you can think of though, and I think the book is definitely worth reading.
My Feels
You’d think that reading about checklists as a subject matter could get boring, but it’s surprisingly fascinating. I loved listening to the studies, the examples, and anecdotes of all the times checklists made a difference. In some of these cases, it feels infuriating to me that people refuse to use checklists just because of ego or hubris. If I could, I’d have a checklist for everything in my life to make things so much easier, but absent of that, I think I’ll just do my best to implement it where I can.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
