Bit Better Book Club 🎉

Weeks 37 and 38: Checklist Manifesto ✔️

Books
#1

Welcome to weeks 37 and 38!

Time to read:

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Have you ever wondered how people were able to fly to the Moon and back when there were no smartphones or personal computers? One secret to the Apollo mission success is their devotion to the operational checklists.

And while you may not be dealing with moonshots everyday, checklists can help you avoid mistakes and bring some order to your everyday life. Atul Gawande is a surgeon who improved intensive care by introducing, you guessed it, checklists. We’ll follow his experience to see how can we improve the areas we care about the most.

Just 18 pages (or 27 minutes for an audiobook) a day to finish it in 2 weeks :raised_hands:

#2
#3
#4

I have always wondered how the construction industry doesn’t seem to make much mistakes - now I know they use checklists! Overall, I liked the stories as well as the fact that a mere checklist was able to cut down the fatality rate so significantly.

#5

Here are my loose notes to self:

For such a boring title, it starts enormously exciting.

The stories of death, near-death, and subsequent revival from various operating rooms got me really hooked!

“He tried the usual surgical approach to remedy this—yelling at everyone to get their act together.”

As with “Why We Sleep?” this is one of the books I have to consume in small portions a time. Not that it’s boring (even though the titles is far from exciting). Quite the opposite. There’s so much information that I have to process it before getting to the next part.

Before the middle of the book I’ve learned about:

  • the intricacies of surgeons’ jobs
  • the miraculous revival of a 3yo girl drowned in cold water in Austria that has been technically dead for an hour or two
  • how the construction workers make sure the buildings won’t collapse and serve their purpose
  • the emergency response to hurricane and flood damage by both public and private sectors
  • how world-class chefs make sure their restaurant serve meals of the highest quality
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