A checklist is the most effective way of keeping track of the list of things to be done and ensuring that nothing is missed.
https://www.google.com/search?q=checklist
"a list of items required, things to be done, or points to be considered, used as a reminder."
In 20091 Atul Gawande wrote a superb book titled The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, which is a must-read for anyone interested in effectiveness both on a personal level and in any field of work. The concepts in the book are simple, both to understand and explain; checklists help us to not forget important steps in tasks. They dramatically reduce errors (which all humans are prone to) and can be used to safely speed up execution without loss of quality/effectiveness.
“under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success.”
~ Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Atul does a excellent job of explaining how several industries/sectors/professions develop and use checklists to perform complex high-stakes tasks precisely, repeatably and virtually error-free.
There are several good reviews/summaries of the book online. One of my favourite summaries is by Nathan Lorenzo (Productivity Game):
Further Reading/Watching on this:
"How do we heal medicine?"" | Atul Gawande's TED Talk: https://youtu.be/L3QkaS249Bc
Extended book review/summary: https://youtu.be/KUv1o-d1m40
NPR "Checklist For Surgery Success": https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122226184
Praise form several high profile leaders Shane Parrish, Malcolm Gladwell, Vinod Khosla, Bill Gates
The book details how checklists were developed independently in several industries: aviation, engineering, construction, finance, medicine, etc. Without checklists we would not have an aviation industry with such a high safety track record. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Evolution The same goes for civil engineering where fewer than 1 in 50k buildings suffer a failure resulting in death.
Ten years later the book remains a "#1 Best Seller"
in "Hospital Administration",
"Health Care Administration"
and "Family Practice Medicine".
https://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0312430000
Those categories might not immediately appeal to you,
but consider the fact that the book is "#954 in Books".
i.e. it's the #954 most sold book in the world.
(for anyone living in a cave for the last 20 years,
Amazon sales
charts
are the ones that matter in 2019!)
1Note: the book was published in 2009 (as a hardback) but the paperback of 2011 is the one that has sold the numbers.
If it's obvious to you why Atul's book and checklists in general matter, then feel free to skim/skip this section. If you found yourself scratching your head as to why checklists are important, consider the following recent news article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47953541
The BBC News article is not very long, this is the full text:
Deaths after surgery in Scotland have dropped by more than a third, research suggests. A study indicated a 37% decrease since 2008, which it attributed to the implementation of a safety checklist. The 19-item list - which was created by the World Health Organization - is supposed to encourage teamwork and communication during operations. The death rate fell to 0.46 per 100 procedures between 2000 and 2014, analysis of 6.8m operations showed.
Dr Atul Gawande, who introduced the checklist and co-authored the study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, said: "Scotland's health system is to be congratulated for a multi-year effort that has produced some of the largest population-wide reductions in surgical deaths ever documented." Prof Jason Leitch, NHS Scotland's national clinical director, added: "This is a significant study which highlights the reduction in surgical mortality over the last decade. "While there are a number of factors that have contributed to this, it is clear from the research that the introduction of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist in 2008 has played a key role."
The BBC Article is a very similar to: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/w-hda041719.php
Sadly while most medical journal articles are behind extortionate paywalls, the research findings/summary are freely available. A patient death rate of 0.46% is still not zero, but let's look at how many lives this has saved just in Scotland:
- 0.46% x 1.37 = 0.63%
- 0.63 - 0.46 = 0.17
- 6.8m x 0.17% = 11,560 people's lives saved!!
This is one study in Scotland which already had good standards of patient care. Since the initial checklist was tested in the pilot study in 2008 it has been rolled out to thousands of hospitals. Millions of lives have been saved by a humble checklist! https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/7/08-010708/en
Checklists are as effective at saving lives as an wonder drug that took billions to develop. The simplicity is almost
The 19-item World Health Organization safety checklist described in the article is this: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/44186/9789241598590_eng_Checklist.pdf
Notice how at the bottom of the single-page checklist it says: "This checklist is not intended to be comprehensive. Additions and modifications to fit local practice are encouraged." The WHO does not give people the tools to modify the checklist. See: https://www.who.int/patientsafety/topics/safe-surgery/checklist/en/ What if it was a single click to "Customise This Checklist" and the UX/UI for doing so was flawless on any device ...? That is what we are going to achieve.
The BBC article was shared on and reached the top of HackerNews
with over a 1k points
(that's a lot for such a short and relatively "boring" post!)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19682451
The top comment has an insightful description of checklists: "a way to debug your life".
Reading through the comments on HN, it's clear that many engineers understand the benefits/power of a checklist in their work/lives, however there are still a few who remain to be convinced.
Atul's book "The Checklist Manifesto", is his attempt to make the benefits of checklists more widespread in more areas of life and society.
A good checklist is:
- Practical
- Concise - focus on the important parts of the task
- Speedy - it should not add "overhead" to the task/activity
- 5–9 items (though they can be longer when necessary, see WHO checklist below)
- 1 page max
- A clear "Pause Point" where you stop during the completion
- Supplement existing knowledge and expertise not replace it
- Uses Upper- & Lowercase
- Field-Tested in the real world, not theoretical
We care about checklists because they are the single most effective way of achieving any objective
Anything from giving a housekeeper instructions for how to use the
One of the areas I'm most excited about is learning/teaching!
Our mission is simple: build the simplest possible UI/UX for creating, sharing and performing repeatable checklists.
And in doing this we will systematically:
- Build a tool that we will use ourselves to:
- maximise our personal effectiveness.
- optimise the communication in our family, team and community by having 100% clarity.
- Help everyone around the world who wants to achieve the same, do with minimal effort/overhead while securely storing their data in a reliable application.
- Make a sustainable living selling the "Software-as-a-Service" to people and organisations who want a "proven system for excellence".
We will start by building a basic "Todo List", we have already written the "beginner-level" example see: github.com/dwyl/todo-list-javascript-tutorial Our intention with the "Todo List JavaScript (TDD) Tutorial" is three-fold:
- Show the general developer population, both complete beginners and experienced non-testers, that it's not only easy, but incredibly effective to write tests first (before implementing the functionality).
- Show the users of our App how a Todo List works from "first principals" so they can get a glimpse of how much effort it takes to build a fully-functional real-time collaborative task tracker.
- Find people who are similarly passionate about solving the challenge(s)/problem(s) we are on a mission to solve.
Our basic Todo List
This is the Post-it Prototype of my "Morning Routine" checklist
that I follow each morning:
It has served as an "OK" reminder of the list of things I do in the morning, but has zero data collection so I cannot reflect on it.
GOTO: https://github.com/dwyl/checklist
If you have questions please comment on the issues: https://github.com/dwyl/checklist/issues