The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Good Morning God,
I was caught by this title — kept thinking about it. But then told myself — HOW MUCH could there be to learn about CHECKLISTS! Still, (with You helping?) I did buy and read it and I’m so glad I did. The book is about WHY we need checklists and HOW HARD it is to accept and adopt them.
The book got started when the World Health Organization called Dr. Gawande and asked him to help reduce the unnecessary deaths and complications in surgery around the world.
How to do this? They did it by finding the most common mistakes or missed steps and created a checklist to confirm they were done. The author and his team came up with a 19 point (90 second) checklist and implemented it in eight hospitals around the world. It was overwhelmingly successful. Major complications fell in all eight hospitals by 36% and deaths fell by 47%. Did hospitals rush to adopt checklists?
Of course not. Change is hard. And change that looks like giving up freedom is even harder – even for 90 seconds. There’s a lot of resistance. I feel both the need and the resistance . I’m no surgeon but modern life is complex — I’d like to drop fewer balls and forget fewer things.
So, I’m working on a few daily Personal Checklists. Things to do before bed. Things to do before leaving home. Then weekly checklists on finances and time management. If I’m smart, God, I’ll show them to friends and ask for feedback.
Habits? Rituals? Checklists? There’s a continuum here, God. And if I want to take it up a notch I can reframe Your Ten Commandments as a CHECKLIST! How many major complications would I avoid if I really took one day a week totally off? Keeping that ONE commandment would help me keep all the rest.
In all of this I would need to ASK and ACCEPT Your help to set new boundaries — to rearrange what I do and when I do it. I would, in short, have to come humbly before You and submit not just my Very Self, but (GASP!) MY EVERYDAY LIFE!
You Love us enough to WANT to be in the Daily Details of our lives, don’t You! YES. YES, GOD, YES!
Story teller,
A Moment with God 
Leave a comment