Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

The Economist has a review of Atul Gawadne's new book extolling the virtues of checklists.

Checklists are useful, in part because we are so apt to forget to do the obvious, and in part because we are so overconfident that we will not forget.

He apparently also points out the genius of the Federal Aviation Authority which investigates ever airliner crash, figures out why the crash occurred, and imposes new checklists and other rules when possible to eliminate such accidents in the future. That is a significant part of the reason that flying is safer than driving, even though moving at high speed in a flimsy tube in the air seems inherently more dangerous than driving.

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