Author : Atul Gawande

The human brain is not designed to remember things. It’s designed to create new ideas, being creative, and find solutions to a problem. Using a checklist allows you to ensure you don’t forget any important steps.

This simple idea of a checklist has saved millions of lives. Atul Gawande explains how a knowledgeable and skilled person can miss something small which might lead to major problems in the field like medical surgery, aviation, and construction.

He also shared the problem in the current medical practices of autonomy i.e making self-decision and not allowing junior to ask any question which I’ve similar experienced in some software development companies.

A checklist cannot be the hero of everything and solves all the problems. It also needs good communication and teamwork.

Checklists require discipline to follow which is flawed in human nature. A checklist should be precise and short to be effective and easy to use. Also, checklists are not perfect. It needs to be refined as per our new experience.

For me, it was an unusual exploration of a to-do list. I’ve been using todoist for the past 2 years which is an advanced checklist application and I can see the value of the checklist there. It helps me to remember and get things done effectively.

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