Looking through my reading log the past couple weeks, I realize that I've been a bit behind with my reading the past couple weeks. This was due mainly to a few projects that I had to be involved with at work, which ended up requiring a bigger time commitment than I originally anticipated. Luckily, those projects will be completed by next month, so I will be able to get back on track very soon!
With that said, one of the books I was able to squeeze in during this time period was Atul Gawande's nonfiction bestseller The Checklist Manifesto. Though this book came out 12 years ago, I actually only heard about it recently, when it was discussed on one of the book podcasts I listen to. I will admit that, going into this book, I was expecting it to be a "how-to" manual of sorts on designing checklists, so I was anticipating a long and arduous read (as most nonfiction books in the "self-help" category usually are for me). To my surprise though, this book proved to be the complete opposite of what I thought it would be. The "how-to" piece was actually less than 10% of the book; majority of the book was filled with fascinating anecdotes about several industries (primarily medicine and aviation) and how checklists contributed to various successes in those industries. It was obvious to me that Gawande is a passionate advocate for the use of checklists and while most of his focus here is of course on his profession (he is a renowned surgeon) and how checklists helped him in his line of work, I still found quite a bit of relevance in what he wrote. I think that anyone who works in a highly complex field (or has tasks that require a fair amount of complexity) can definitely benefit from incorporating checklists in the way that Gawande describes. In fact, before I even got to the end of the book, I already started thinking about possible ways to incorporate checklists to a few of my own tasks at work.
One of the things I appreciate most about this book is how well-written it is. Medicine and aviation are two fields that I would normally find boring to read about in such painstaking detail, but Gawande managed to make the subject matter interesting to the point that I wanted to keep turning the pages to see how things would turn out. I actually ended up finishing this book in one sitting, which usually never happens with me when reading nonfiction books! I think what also helped is that Gawande writes in an honest, down-to-earth manner with a good amount of self-deprecating humor sprinkled throughout, which is very different from the "preachiness" of many "self-help" books out there (especially the business-related ones, most of which tend to have a condescending tone that usually turns me off the getgo).
While definitely not perfect by any means, there is a lot of good insight here — to me, this is a useful book that is well worth a read-through regardless of what profession you are in. Though with that said, Gawande does describe some of the medical situations he encounters in explicit detail, so just a word of warning, in case stuff like that makes you queasy (I personally read through these scenes quickly and in a few cases, skipped some of the descriptions altogether). Overall, this book was both helpful and entertaining (plus, at about 200 pages, it's relatively short), so definitely a recommended read!
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