The Checklist Manifesto - A book review

Every weekday morning after I wake up to my cell phone alarm, I complete 36 or so tasks before driving my car to work. I consider 12 of these tasks to be critical, e.g. put money clip in back pocket (yes, all wise guys carry a money clip), put reading glasses in cover and in laptop bag. One particular task is mission critical. If I forget to take my laptop to work (has happened a few times over the years), I'd have to drive back home from work to get it. The rest I can improvise. If I forget my watch, I'll check the time on my cell phone or laptop. If I forget my cell phone, I'll call people using my work phone. If I forget my money clip, I'll borrow cash from coworkers. Last Monday morning, I forgot to put the trash out; a rarety. So I gave my mom and sister a full trash bag each time they visited during that week. The following Monday night, I put the remainder trash overflow in my unsuspecting neighbors' trash bins where there was excess capacity.

I've been going through this routine for years, and consider myself a "super specialist" at carrying them out. Yet, I consistently fail at 1-2 of the 12 critical tasks once or twice a week. After years of what feels like groundhog day (the movie), I should be able to sleep walk through these 36 mundane tasks. I fail because I'm under a time pressure, and the tasks are too many for an hour of allotted time (shower, shave, iron shirt are just 3 of the 36). So there is a level of complexity from the sheer number of them. According to Mr. Gawande, a check list of the 12 critical tasks can be of substantial help. This check list is short (12 of 36), and should contain the tasks that are prone to memory lapse with a history. I will not include "eat breakfast" to this list, because unless I suffer from Alzheimers, I will never fail to perform this step.

Now, should I really create a check list to remember to put my sneakers in my trunk along with the rest of my gym attire (when I forget this task, I have to skip working out at the gym on that day)? Not really. But imagine if failure at any of these tasks means putting someone's or hundreds of people's lives in danger. The stakes are that high in the surgical and airline pilot professions, with mind boggling complexity. Mr. Gawande, himself a highly esteemed general surgeon discusses case studies demonstrating consequences of inconceivable failures at the highest professional levels in a multitude of industries, and how a simple idea such as a checklist has proven undeniably that critical failures can be reduced significantly. It is unfortunate that resistance to this idea is rampant. From page 173 of the hardcopy, "We don't like checklists. They can be painstaking... But I don't think the issue here is mere laziness. There's something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away, not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us - those we aspire to be - handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise." Adapt to the environment, Darwin, expletive happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it (appropriate and timely "Collateral" Tom Cruise quote inserted). "They do not have protocols and checklists."

The checklist is a brilliant and simple idea that is picking up steam thanks to the efforts of Mr. Gawande and those like him. This book should be mandatory reading in colleges and professions with serious health consequences.

The Checklist Manifesto Amazon Link

The Paradox of the United States - a review of The Right Nation

In "The Right Nation - The Penguin Press, NY, 2004", Mr. Micklethwait and Mr. Wooldridge convincingly make the case that the U.S. political landscape has been steering towards the right for decades since Ronald Reagan, and bowing to the pressures of the well organized and mobilized conservative bloc.  By European standards, even liberals in the U.S. are considered to be the right of center, and America is a conservative nation at its core.  “The paradox of the United States is that it is at once both the most admired country in the world and one of the most reviled; outside its borders, “America” has somehow become a code word for technological sophistication, meritocracy and opportunity as well as for primitive justice, imperialism and inequality.” p. 24

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and subsequent leftist government laws and social programs served as the impetus to the rise and dominance of the conservatives; a trend that is likely to continue in the foreseeable future.  This book was written on the eve of the 2004 elections that put Mr. George W. Bush in the office for a second term.  The authors state that even a Democratic win wouldn’t deter from the rightist agenda.  Former president Clinton, to a large extent advanced the conservative agenda with NAFTA, welfare reform, reduction of government to its smallest size in 35 years, deficit reduction and not blowing the surplus on new liberal programs.  The Democratic  dominance of the executive and legislative branches, spurred by the debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and a failing economy in the latter part of Bush’s presidency, was short lived.  Following 2 years of ruling the house, senate and the presidency, the Democratic Party suffered the worst defeat in over 40 years in 2010, losing majorities in the House, governorships and state legislatures.

What is intriguing about the conservative movement is that despite its glaring contradictions in ideology, it continues to march ahead unscathed.  From page 9 of the hardcopy:  “How can you trumpet a strong military and a vigorous foreign policy and then insist on small government?  How can you celebrate individualism but then try to subject those individuals to the rule of God?”  Mr. Bush became the president who fed steroids to the monster.  Under his conservative rule, government size increased and spending spiraled out of control, turning Mr. Clinton’s massive surpluses to colossal deficits on a dime, with no end in sight.

What gets short shrift in the book is the blatantly inconvenient truth that the solutions to America’s seemingly insurmountable fiscal problems can be found in neither the right, nor the left ideology.  Rather, the only obvious choice is to cut spending AND increase taxes, tickling no one’s fancy.  Here's Ben Stein, former President Nixon's speech writer on the subject.  Even after the economic meltdown in 2007, the personal consumption rate remains at persistently high levels around 70% of GDP since 2001.  In a world of scarce resources and the rise of the middle class in two of the world’s most populous nations of China and India, current consumption and savings levels are unsustainable.  America can no longer afford to spend and consume its way out of trouble.  The day of reckoning is upon us, albeit it may take another few years to make very painful choices.

Do you really need to pee, or do you just want candy?

I've always been fascinated by the prospect of pursuing a career as an entrepreneur.  I took two entrepreneurship classes at USC as a part of my MBA curriculum, and used my only foray in this field for a class project at the time; an endeavor that paid for two thirds of my exorbitant post graduate program at a private school.

Thanks to Virginia Postrel's "In Praise of Irrational Exuberance - Does a flourishing economy depend on delusion?" posted on BigQuestionsOnline.com, I will no longer consider my professional life as a disappointment for failing to realize my dream of becoming an entrepreneur, and here's why:

Many entrepreneurs are delusional about their chances of success.  Investing time and money in a new business is an "irrational bet" which the entrepreneurial culture encourages.  A few startups get lucky and hit the jackpot.  The rest fizzle out of memory.  This view is what critics of capitalism espouse; that the entrepreneur bunch overestimate their chances of striking it rich.  In truth, however, entrepreneurs are rarely motivated by money alone.  They strive to create something of value, and more importantly, be their own boss.  The idea of working for others is utterly unappealing, and one way or another, a venture will succeed enough to sustain them.

The same illusion is what spurs consumers to consume.  "The glamour of new, as yet- unexperienced goods or experiences thus contain an element of pleasurable, often deliberate self delusion.  We not only enjoy new things, we also enjoy imagining how much we'll enjoy them.  Anticipation and desire themselves are part of consumer pleasure."

And while on the subject of fantasizing, according to an October 2000 Time-CNN poll, 19 percent of Americans were convinced they belonged to the richest 1  percent.  Another 20 percent thought they'd make the rank of the top 1 percent at some point in their lives (the American dream?)  That's quite a turnover in the top 1 percent category to accommodate 20 percent of the population passing through.

We're in the middle of potty training our older daughter.  We offer her candy every time she uses the toilet.  This morning, she asked to use the bathroom for a second time in less than a half hour.  When my wife asked her, "do you really need to pee, or do you just want candy?", she responded "I want candy."  And that, as it turns out, is how I feel about entrepreneurship.  Do I really want to be an entrepreneur, or just toil in thought of being one?  I suspect I just want the candy as well.

Mama, I'm gonna go to the bathroom and pick my nose. Can you come too?

As I was walking downstairs to the garage to empty trash for the Monday morning Waste Management pick up (cargo included regular trash, recyclables and used diapers), I realized what a useless being I am.  Waste Management picks up and processes our trash, GM/Toyota make our cars (mechanics repair them), our clothes are manufactured in other countries and transported to us by different companies, when they tear or a button or two come off, we dispose of them rather than repair them, electricity is generated and delivered to our residence, water, gas, piping, the house that was built for us were not by us.....  Just how much would we be able to accomplish if dropped on a different planet where we had to fend for ourselves, like in the movie Predators with Adrien Brody?  Yet, a few thousand years ago, we were completely self sufficient.  I would be a laughing stock of earth's inhabitants back then, but I can sure devise a mean spreadsheet on a laptop I have little knowledge of the mechanics.  Now we have refregirators so we can stock food derived from cattle we would have no clue how to raise, but we sure like to graze like them.

Sometimes I wonder if I were to travel back in time, whether on my own free will or kicking and screaming, how much would I accelerate the development of useful (and useless, e.g. text messaging) technology?  I can describe how I used to drive a kick a$$ car, and fly thousands of miles in a matter of hours 30K+ feet in the air, but would I be able to hasten the invention of automobiles, aircrafts, antibiotics, the steam engine, drip irrigation, electric power generation, AC/DC (the band), prevent the rise of communism and Stalin, fascism and Hitler, Pol Pot, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, AIDS, 400K+ deaths a year in the U.S. from cancer and complications caused by smoking, and 9/11?

In all of human history, we're the most spoiled bunch, and we have little to show apart from our college degrees that load us with useless information on how to push meaningless numbers around in a fictitious economy manufacturing nothing, but not how to diagnose and repair common breakdowns in our house (read Shop Class as Soul Craft).  I have a fire alarm 25 feet high on the ceiling that was chirping for weeks 'cause I couldn't find a feasible way of changing its battery until we called a handyman to get it fixed!  I bet our neighbors were enjoying the pleasant sound.  Pluck the moron who put a fire alarm on a cathedral ceiling.  I haven't been billed for the handy service yet, but I bet it's no more than $75 for that, and repairing our kitchen faucet from low water pressure.

Today, we are so dependent on others to provide us with the basic necessities of life that even my 2.5 year old daughter asked my wife to join her in the bathroom while she picked her nose.  These are her words:  "Mama, I'm gonna go to the bathroom and pick my nose.  Can you come too?"

How not to preserve gender equality and women's dignity

"France says that ensuring gender equality and women's dignity _ and upholding a tradition of secularism _ are among the reasons France is outlawing fully covering Islamic veils, like niqabs, which hide all but the eyes." - Newser, Oct. 29, 2010.  The ban was passed into law in October, 2010, to be effective in April, 2011.

No matter how backwards a niqab is, surely it's not as offensive as this:

But lo and behold, a mayor in an Italian southern seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia has banned "very skimply clothes".  "Short skirts will be allowed to be worn as long as they are in keeping with Mayor Luigi Bobbio's rule; they can't be revealing." - mydaily, Oct. 27, 2010

Surely, banning skimpy clothes would be in line with France's concern about gender equality and women's dignity. Therefore, if France is serious about the dignity of women, skimpy clothes should be banned as well.  Because if not, then the effort to ban the Islamic veil must have had motives other than what was publicly stated.

Vacuum of Death - Bring it!

My nightly routine involves spending one hour cleaning up after my 2.5 year old and washing by hand the baby bottles and their gazillion accessories.  One particularly difficult night, after spending overtime picking up rice from the floor surrounded by stuffed animals, I thought of the perfect product for this and other back breaking tidying up activities:

Vacuum of Death (VOD)!

Here's how this product works:  Vacuum of death is a must for any household that wants to remain stuffed animal free.  Any stuffed animals found on the floor will be seeked out and destroyed by this vacuum.  In its spare time, VOD stands guard at the entrance of the house, and at the first sign of an approaching stuffed animal, activates its 1,200 AMP motor, sucking up these most undesirable waste of products and incinerates them to smitherines from a distance of at least 100 yards (the length of a Football field).  VOD is a smart product, designed to identify repeat offenders; those who bring stuffed animal gifts on 2 visits or more, and offering them one of two options before they ring the doorbell:

1.  Go back to where they came from WITH their gift
2.  Meet the same fate as the stuffed animals described above, the American justice way

Here's why this product is necessary:

Politics of waste - What the heck happened to Stephanopoulos?

Today, after work I was on the treadmill huffing and puffing with a heavy stomach from a big lunch I had at a Japanese restaurant; Bento box with barbeque short ribs and assorted tempura.  On one of the suspended flat screens, Bill O'Reilly was blabbering about the 2010 election results with George Stephanopuolos.  I got to thinking.... what a mind boggling amount of effort and resources are wasted during election years.  The two opposing forces spend quite a bit of time and money jousting, and much of the effort is unproductive and less about the issues that affect the general population, and more about mobilizing the armies of partisanship and advancing selfish agenda.  The political air in the U.S. has been nasty, brutish and very polluted.  If there is such a thing as an aggregate national energy, defined as the total amount of effort available by all U.S. residents to accomplish tasks during any given period, a good chunk of it is wasted on these political machinations that serve nobody's interests.  These unproductive and often negative energies include all of the supposed news and commentary shows on T.V. with the red states and the blue states blablabla, and the processes to jockey for political gain such as "congressional redistricting".  Are you kidding me?   Such an activity is a part of our political process?  Redistricting is sometimes manipulated to maximize the effect of supporters' votes and to minimize the effect of opponents' votes, generally to keep incumbents in power.  You can read about this here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting

By the way, I couldn't remember former Clinton press secretary, George Stephanopuolos' name for this blog.  So when I visited Bill O'Reilly's page to look him up, I found the names of every guest before and after him on the O'Reilly show today, but not him!  The title of today's show (November 3rd) was "What the heck happened in the election?", when it should have been more aptly stated as "What the heck happened to Stephanopoulos?"

Politics of clutter and then some

This afternoon, as I was driving to East Coast Bagels in Irvine to pick up lunch, I saw numerous election signs lined up along Culver street.  I find it to be an insult to voters’ intelligence to assume these political signs somehow influence their vote.  These, along with all T.V., radio, newspaper and magazine political ads contain no useful information for voters, are heavily biased, exaggerated and often times inflammatory or false, undemocratic, and should absolutely be banned.  Why would a nation that prides itself in freedom and democracy allow this and other special interests detrimental to social and public welfare influence government and legislation?  How can money be allowed to wield such a force in election outcomes?  The American political system is, much like many of its institutions, e.g. its criminal justice system, in need of a little restructuring.  Such a system heavily influenced by money and special interests is self destructive, and it’s only a matter of time when drastic action will curb its stranglehold.  Proponents of free speech should take note that money and political ads silence the voice of the majority by introducing corruption in the process of fair representation.  So the current system is anti-free speech and should be dealt with accordingly.  Elections should not be about raising and spending money mercilessly.  Such a system opens the door to excessive special interest influence.  This is not government for the people, by the people.  This government serves the interests of the few who can afford to donate big money and hire expensive lobbyists.  "The long and bitter 2010 campaign season drew more than $3.5 billion in spending, making it the most expensive nonpresidential vote ever, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group." - CNN.  How much of this money is to provide voters with balanced and unbiased information to help them make informed choices?

Sadly, these election signs do influence voter behavior, which brings us to the next point:

Voting, like driving a car should be a privilege, not a right.  All voters should demonstrate a basic understanding of the candidates and issues they vote on.  All drivers are required to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the rules of the road, and driving erradically inflicts far less damage to society than uninformed voting.  So why not license citizens to vote?  How can voters lean heavily on one party, only to vote for the other in a measely two years?  Because most people vote based on their immediate financial welfare, that's why.  If John Doe had lost his job during Bush, and two years after voting for Obama is no better off, is it fair or rational to hold Obama, or even Bush to begin with accountable to his immediate state of welfare?  Shouldn't John Doe dig deeper to understand the root causes of long term unemployment rather than waste his vote based on which way the wind is blowing?

And to those apathetic voters who disengage because they perceive all politicians as corrupt or ineffective, your license to vote should be forever revoked.  Picking the lesser of two evils is still better than doing nothing.  Either that, or all citizens should be forced to vote as it's done in Australia to avoid the pitfalls associated with voter apathy and the undue influence of the right or left extremists.

A drive down Culver in Irvine, CA - Election signs as far as the eye can see