8. Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto

[pauraque]

I used to work at a greeting card store that stood between a coffee shop and a smoothie place. We had a sign asking customers not to bring their drinks inside, because too many people had spilled them all over the cards, but often people didn't see the sign or ignored it

Comments

[holyschist]

I thought this book was fascinating and a little disheartening at the same time--the amount of resistance to checklists in the medical field* is frightening.

And I loved how Gawande wrote about everything in the book--he could seriously make anything interesting (I especially liked the parts about chefs, since a lot of writing about professional chefs focuses on the Genius and Innovation and not on how they turn out consistently good food night after night).

*I originally typed "medieval field," oops. *facepalm*

[pauraque]

Yeah, the chef section was good. I think people know deep down that everything really is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, as they say, but the desire persists to romanticize things and make them more glamorous and heroic than they really are.