[HN Gopher] A Life-Saving Checklist (2007)
___________________________________________________________________
A Life-Saving Checklist (2007)
Author : Tomte
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-12-23 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| k310 wrote:
| Archived. https://archive.is/0H188
|
| Atul Gawande is the author of several books, the most familiar
| being "The Checklist Manifesto"
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Honestly, his book, The Checklist Manifesto, could have been a
| long-ish article like this one. I still love the book as one of
| the best to get things done. And I re-read the book quite
| often.[1] I love checklists, either written down or in my mind
| for most events, either at work or in life.
|
| One of my most abused pieces of advice to professionals and teams
| is to make checklists. This has even spilled into my family. I
| get my daughters, The Anxious Generation, to create checklists.
|
| 1. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/the-checklist-manifesto/
| Tomte wrote:
| What do you mean? This is exactly that article. It's
| substantially the same as the book. Why should he write a
| second mostly identical article?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Why should he write a second mostly identical article?
|
| That's not being suggested. What _is_ being suggested is that
| the book could have been condensed into a mere article to
| begin with.
| Tomte wrote:
| That is the article! The same author, the same subject.
| What else do you want?
| cushychicken wrote:
| The article became a book. The comment is suggesting that
| the expansion was not an improvement.
| AnonC wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of checklists and annotating/updating them with
| more information (when, what, observations, etc.). I see a lot of
| value with checklists in managing the complexity and in making
| sure that something doesn't just slip by. Even if I know several
| steps from memory, I'd still want a documented list to
| reduce/remove human error. After all, we may not have our best
| skills with us at all times and in all situations.
|
| Unfortunately, the people I work with aren't that interested in
| creating checklists or keeping the ones I create updated. But I
| trudge along hoping that sometime in the future they may get some
| value from it.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I have pretty bad ADHD. It comes and goes over cycles with a
| frequency measured in weeks/months.
|
| When I'm doing poorly, I have a hard time functioning as an
| adult. So, I use checklists and phone reminders a lot, even for
| simple things. I use them to start the day with things like:
|
| -make coffee.
|
| -check calendar for schedule
|
| - block out time / add reminders as needed for the day
|
| -plan morning (I have a list of mandatory and optional morning
| activities, along with the time it takes to do them)
|
| - pack lunch.
|
| - take meds.
|
| -pack for work: (laptop, id badge, work phone, headphones,
| sunglasses, phone charger/cables)
|
| - make breakfast for kids (along with a recurring reminder to
| start this by 06:45)
|
| -wake up kids (reminders at 07:00)
|
| Etc, etc. You get the idea.
|
| I can't make my brain remember to do basic activities, and I
| naturally vary my routine, and at the same time I really
| struggle to remember to do things unusual to my routine. But I
| can use my engineering side to work the problem. When my brain
| is performing poorly, these checklists are essential.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I'm exactly the same. When we have the phone on CarPlay my
| wife will smile at the reminders that pop up.
|
| 'Brush teeth'
|
| 'Drink water'
|
| 'Take vitamin d'
|
| 'Feed dogs'
|
| And I'm basically helpless without the reminders at the bad
| times.
|
| My severe adhd is cyclical too.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| i need to do this. may i ask which app you are using and
| how you set the reminders so that you see them regularly?
| Ma8ee wrote:
| I'm not the one you asked, but I rely heavily on the
| Apple's Reminders app.
| MarlonPro wrote:
| This reminds me to re-read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul
| Gawande.
| samatman wrote:
| Why do that, when you could read the New Yorker article, _A
| Life-Saving Checklist_ , by Atul Gawande?
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Checklists are great! Until TPTB decide everything should be a
| checklist, and then that everyone needs to be trained to the
| checklist and no more than that, and then start punishing any
| deviation from said checklists, and the all the newbies go 'why
| should I learn all this technical stuff, it's not needed for the
| checklist?'.
|
| And then something changes and no one knows how to do anything
| but follow the checklist that doesn't work anymore....
| dragonsky wrote:
| I think this highlights the most important bit that is missing
| from most checklists... the why.
|
| Yes we have a list of things to do, and we know that if we
| don't do all those things then bad things can happen, but the
| most important thing is to know why we are doing those
| things... Because when bad things start to happen despite
| following the list, you need to know why you are doing those
| things so that you have some hope of making it better.
| cushychicken wrote:
| A few jobs ago, one of the managers of my division read _The
| Checklist Manifesto_ and decided everyone needed to read and
| did the Jerry Maguire move of buying everyone a copy to read.
|
| It kind of worked the way you described. Everyone kind of
| stopped thinking and just became checklist apes.
|
| It wasn't until a few years later that I realized a major
| factor about checklists the book mentioned, but that management
| conveniently ignored: _the checklist must only be one page_.
| Any longer and people ignore it.
|
| Critical step that our management ignored. They just saw it as
| a big, never ending, ever growing list of rules. Which isn't
| the right way to think about it.
| gowld wrote:
| https://www.checkmateaviation.com/ seems to agree, but they
| pack a lot into a 3-column checklist, where most items are
| just a few keywords.
| levocardia wrote:
| The book version of this article (The Checklist Manifesto)
| completely revolutionized how I did experimental science in
| graduate school. Early on, I saw many experiments ruined by human
| error: machine settings were incorrect, sensors not switched on,
| equipment not calibrated, incorrect instructions given to the
| subject, etc.
|
| I was mortified by how little attention most professors and
| students paid to this problem. Something like half the data
| collections I was helping on (as a lowly first-year PhD) had some
| problem with the data collection.
|
| I read The Checklist Manifesto and used it to design my own
| checklist -- and crucially, checklist procedure -- for my data
| collections and it made a huge difference. Not only did I collect
| much better data, but I was able to do much more sophisticated
| multi-step experiments without making mistakes.
|
| The biggest takeaway for me was that checklists are not a piece
| of paper; they're a system. It's not enough for the surgeon to
| have a checklist, they'll just glance at it and think "oh of
| course I did these things". They only work when the nurse reads
| the checklist, item by item, aloud to the surgeon (I later
| realized this is exactly what SpaceX and NASA are doing during
| launch countdowns). Additionally, the checklist itself needs to
| be iterated on many times, removing unhelpful items and adding
| things you miss. And the checklist MUST be one page, no more.
|
| If I ran an experimental lab of any kind, the book would be
| mandatory reading.
| kortilla wrote:
| SpaceX and NASA countdowns aren't quite checklists in the same
| sense of the surgeon's or pilot's checklist.
|
| Those countdowns are verifying that a bunch of launch blocking
| gates have not been closed. The key difference is that it's not
| a reminder for people of stuff that needs to be done. It's more
| like a roll call to make sure they have a unanimous vote to go
| from all teams that have a stake.
| pjbster wrote:
| I have 3 kids and have been to visit A&E countless times over the
| years. I always note the hand written checklists stuck up in the
| walls of Triage and wonder how many of these were derived through
| trial and error and which were introduced by more experienced
| medics.
|
| For some reason the fact that they've obviously been produced
| locally gives me more confidence that they've done the hard
| yards; professionally printed ones would instead make me think
| they're only up there because management wanted to raise
| awareness.
| julianeon wrote:
| I have this theory that a lot of best advice is very plain and
| boring, very repetitive, and so we need various stratagems to
| somehow overcome that, to present it to our minds in such a way
| that they can focus on it again. "Make checklists" may be the
| best example of this.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-23 23:01 UTC)