16: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

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1. 00:00:00 I have a cup of coffee with me.
2. 00:00:02 Nice.
3. 00:00:04 I had my coffee already.
4. 00:00:06 Yeah, this is...well, this is the coffee you gave me.
5. 00:00:08 Nice.
6. 00:00:10 I'm a fan, and I think my wife is a fan too, enough so that she is trying to figure out where to find it.
7. 00:00:15 So you need to help me figure out how I can find it.
8. 00:00:18 All right.
9. 00:00:19 Is this a local thing to your area?
10. 00:00:21 It's roasted in Wisconsin.
11. 00:00:24 There's another Wisconsin-Roster that I...
12. 00:00:28 They have a subscription service that I get coffee in the mail once a month, and that is Ruby coffee.
13. 00:00:34 Okay.
14. 00:00:35 So that's another one that I would recommend.
15. 00:00:37 It's pretty similar to the one that I gave you.
16. 00:00:40 Okay.
17. 00:00:41 I like the one that I gave you a little bit better, but I am an ultra coffee snob, so...
18. 00:00:47 You may not care, and the other one I know for sure will deliver to your door, so...
19. 00:00:54 Fair enough.
20. 00:00:55 Because I know the first morning I made it, I have this tendency to not tell my wife whenever I've swapped bags of coffee,
21. 00:01:05 because we tend to open one, work our way through it, and then when we're done with that one, I go into the next.
22. 00:01:11 But I don't tell her when I've done that, so it's always part of a game to see if she can figure out when I've made that change,
23. 00:01:19 and see if she can pick up the differences in it.
24. 00:01:21 She caught this one right away.
25. 00:01:22 Nice.
26. 00:01:23 Oh, you must have done something different this morning.
27. 00:01:25 Well, no, I didn't do anything different.
28. 00:01:27 I just used good coffee that might give me.
29. 00:01:30 You're in a new coffee bracket.
30. 00:01:33 That might be true, more so than I care.
31. 00:01:38 So I'm looking through our list of follow-up.
32. 00:01:40 Holy cow.
33. 00:01:41 Yeah, there's a lot.
34. 00:01:44 This might...
35. 00:01:45 We might have to do this one rapid fire, just because there's a lot here, and I'm looking through the list of things for me
36. 00:01:52 and realizing, "Wow, this is a bad round for follow-up for me."
37. 00:01:57 Whoops.
38. 00:01:59 Well, I didn't hit 100% either, so I'll go first, I guess.
39. 00:02:06 Okay.
40. 00:02:07 So the first one you have on here for me is reading my strengths finder with Rachel.
41. 00:02:12 I have not done that yet.
42. 00:02:14 She still needs to take it, and then we need to sit down and compare, so you can hold me accountable to that one again.
43. 00:02:19 Taking responsibility for relationships, this was one that I didn't really expect to be on the follow-up list because there wasn't anything specifically actionable with this, but I'm trying.
44. 00:02:30 So I'd say progress is being made, but there's still definitely room for improvement as just about anybody who deals with me on a daily basis will probably confer.
45. 00:02:40 Enough.
46. 00:02:41 I have been so close to implementing this so many times, and I haven't really figured out exactly how I want to do it and which accounts I want to do it with yet.
47. 00:02:51 I did, though, get rid of email on my phone completely.
48. 00:02:55 Awesome.
49. 00:02:56 So I used to have dispatch, airmail, and the Apple Mail app on my phone.
50. 00:03:00 None of them are on my phone at the moment, and it feels great.
51. 00:03:04 Wow, I'm impressed.
52. 00:03:07 Yeah, and it hasn't been super long, so time will tell, I guess, but so far, I haven't missed it.
53. 00:03:16 Okay, so with your out-of-office replies, help me out again.
54. 00:03:22 What was the intent behind that? Because this is something I've played around with in the past, but for me, it feels like I can't pull it off.
55. 00:03:30 Yeah, so really what it comes down to is me putting in an out-of-office reply that sets the tone and the expectations for the email communication going forward.
56. 00:03:39 So, for example, Chris Bailey did this where he says, "I only check email at 3pm, so it may take me a little while to get back to you."
57. 00:03:46 Sorry of a thing.
58. 00:03:48 And I guess I've just been too chicken to actually do that because I think I, at least some of the accounts and the relationships that I have over email,
59. 00:03:59 I need to tread carefully with this one.
60. 00:04:01 So, I just haven't found a nice way to do it yet that I am okay implementing, like, system-wide.
61. 00:04:09 So, that one's still in progress. I don't know if that one will.
62. 00:04:13 Yeah, I really like the idea. I just don't know if it's going to work for me.
63. 00:04:16 But I'm in the track.
64. 00:04:17 So, here's where I land, because I think there's a lot of appeal to it, so it's something that gets me a little excited.
65. 00:04:22 It's like, "Oh yeah, I can set this up." And then people understand what to expect from me before they ever get a response from me.
66. 00:04:28 I totally get that.
67. 00:04:30 My hangup is that I do enough support, and I have enough clients that, you know, my website went down.
68. 00:04:38 Well, I kind of need to know about that.
69. 00:04:40 I think that's a big deal.
70. 00:04:42 And those are things that require not, like, not notification level checks.
71. 00:04:51 But there's a group of people, you know, you hit a certain level within the support structure for me, and there's a series of emails that I'll check roughly once every hour.
72. 00:05:02 I've got my own ways of doing that.
73. 00:05:04 But if I set up some sort of an auto-office reply, I'd have to have a lot of granularity on who that goes back to,
74. 00:05:12 in which email addresses it goes out on, and in some cases, one email address has different ways of being responded to,
75. 00:05:19 depending on who you are and what our relationship is in the past.
76. 00:05:23 So I really struggle with this.
77. 00:05:25 I'm with you in that I think there could be a lot of benefit there, but just figuring out how to pull it off in reality is not as simple as it sounds.
78. 00:05:35 Right.
79. 00:05:36 Really, the hangup for me with this is that I feel like I need to get people to respect boundaries in other areas of life
80. 00:05:48 before I can take that a step further and apply it to email.
81. 00:05:52 I don't think I've really found the sweet spot for that yet in terms of just like,
82. 00:05:58 this is the time on my calendar that is completely off limits.
83. 00:06:01 You know, so I think I need to really figure out how to achieve that 100% before I apply it to email.
84. 00:06:09 Fair enough.
85. 00:06:10 The other things here, use technology to be a producer, not a consumer and teach my kids.
86. 00:06:15 This one probably doesn't have a definition of done.
87. 00:06:18 This is just something that I want to apply this mindset going forward.
88. 00:06:21 And I think I've done an okay job at this so far.
89. 00:06:25 Like for example, my kids don't use a computer a lot, but when they do, they're using, we use Bitzbox.
90. 00:06:30 So it's like teaching them to code.
91. 00:06:32 And that obviously fits the definition of being a producer, not a consumer.
92. 00:06:37 You know, they're not sitting there watching YouTube videos.
93. 00:06:39 Was that one of those things that came up at Mac stock?
94. 00:06:42 Maybe Adam Christensen mentioned some other stuff I know which I ended up getting some of that also.
95. 00:06:51 But I think somebody in the audience, maybe...
96. 00:06:54 Yeah, definitely.
97. 00:06:55 I think maybe somebody in the audience brought up Bitzbox.
98. 00:06:58 Okay, got it.
99. 00:07:00 And then the last one, "Make you read the sleep revolution with me."
100. 00:07:03 I believe that one is now on the calendar for Bookworm.
101. 00:07:07 So I guess that one's done.
102. 00:07:09 Awesome.
103. 00:07:10 Cool.
104. 00:07:11 I suppose that means you're done with your list and I have to do mine.
105. 00:07:15 Yep, your turn.
106. 00:07:17 Okay.
107. 00:07:18 Well, first one on this list is writing down my expectations for projects before I start them.
108. 00:07:23 And this goes back a few books, but I still haven't closed any of those.
109. 00:07:28 So I can't really report on the outcome of them.
110. 00:07:32 So I'll bring that one up again probably next time because I know I've got a couple projects that should finish between here and there.
111. 00:07:39 So I'm just kind of curious to see how that goes.
112. 00:07:41 So not a lot to report there other than it's still in progress.
113. 00:07:45 The next one on this list is, "Avoid my phone in the early morning."
114. 00:07:49 Depending on the day dictates how successful I am at this.
115. 00:07:54 If it's a day where I know I'm going to be spending the morning in my office and I'm going to be writing and I'm going to be coding or something, it's pretty easy for me to delay.
116. 00:08:05 It's pretty easy for me to delay picking up that phone.
117. 00:08:08 If it's a day where I'm going to go into our church and do some work in there right away or I've got a meeting first thing in the morning, keeping that phone out of my hand when I first get up is kind of a challenge.
118. 00:08:21 Because I feel like I'm trying to check some things before the day gets going and it takes off on me.
119. 00:08:25 So I feel like I'm trying to just keep an eye on, you know, do I have any websites that went down that I need to fix before I leave?
120. 00:08:32 I think that's what I'm doing, but I haven't fully nailed down why I need to do that.
121. 00:08:38 It's just a reaction at the moment.
122. 00:08:40 So I better leave that one on the list because I think I still need to work on that one.
123. 00:08:46 All right.
124. 00:08:47 So I've got, "Know the task before grabbing my phone."
125. 00:08:50 So make sure I know what I'm going to do before I grab my phone and do something with it.
126. 00:08:54 This is one that I think is similar to focus and that you have to continually work at it in order to improve it.
127. 00:09:03 And for me, I've learned that I can pick my phone up and know what I'm going to do with it, go grab it and do that.
128. 00:09:10 Sometimes I end up getting distracted after I've done that thing.
129. 00:09:14 And sometimes I pick it up knowing what task I'm going to do, but then there's a notification on the screen and I immediately fall into that, fall into that trap.
130. 00:09:23 And the next thing I know I'm closing my phone and then I'm like, "Wait, I grabbed this for something else and I don't know what it was."
131. 00:09:31 So I've got a bit of an issue there that I'm still trying to work out.
132. 00:09:34 But again, I think that's something that you have to build that over time, I think.
133. 00:09:39 That's my perspective. That's my excuse, maybe.
134. 00:09:43 The last one on my list is telling my kids that I'm going to be doing something on my phone and what I'm going to be doing before I pick it up.
135. 00:09:51 This is a bit humbling.
136. 00:09:53 And I'm not very good at it yet, but I do it on occasion.
137. 00:09:57 And my oldest is very good about, because she's such a creature I have it like I am, that whenever I told her that I was going to try to tell her what I was doing with my phone before I picked it up, she now asks me.
138. 00:10:10 "Daddy, what are you doing with your phone?"
139. 00:10:13 She'll ask me if I haven't told her.
140. 00:10:15 Oh my gosh, that's humbling. I'm goofing around on Twitter.
141. 00:10:21 That's not something you want to tell your kids.
142. 00:10:24 I'd rather say, "I'm closing a business deal." That's what I would love to say, but I'm not.
143. 00:10:29 So it's, yeah.
144. 00:10:32 So there we go. That's my follow-up.
145. 00:10:34 A whole bunch of failures there for the most part. A couple delays, but I'm doing all right.
146. 00:10:39 It's a learning process, I think.
147. 00:10:42 All right. It's my excuse for now.
148. 00:10:45 So all of that completed.
149. 00:10:51 Well, step into today's book. I really like this one, Mike. I'm a fan.
150. 00:10:59 I thought you might. This book was not at all what I expected from it, to be honest.
151. 00:11:04 No, not at all. The book we're covering today is the Checklist Manifesto by, I still don't know how to pronounce a guy's name, a tool, Gawande.
152. 00:11:13 So I apologize. Yeah. I apologize if I mispronounced that.
153. 00:11:19 But this was very interesting. He starts off by telling the story of kind of miraculously how they saved this little girl's life.
154. 00:11:32 We brought her back to life after she'd been underwater for a considerable amount of time.
155. 00:11:37 She fell through a hole in the ice.
156. 00:11:40 And system by system, they brought her back basically from the dead, and they did that because of Checklist.
157. 00:11:46 And that really grabs your attention right from the beginning.
158. 00:11:51 And you feel like you have to read the rest of this because if it can be used in this scenario to accomplish this specific purpose,
159. 00:12:00 then it's like, I have to apply this to my own life. Whatever you're going to tell me in the next several chapters, Mr. Gawande, you now have my attention.
160. 00:12:07 And yes, I'm already drinking the Kool-Aid. Just let me know what I need to do.
161. 00:12:12 No kidding. And what you said about this not being what you expected. I really was, in my mind, what I was planning to see whenever I go through this was,
162. 00:12:24 why should you have a Checklist? How do you go about writing one? What's your process whenever you use it? That's what I was expecting to get.
163. 00:12:32 But instead, we got this story of his journey of bringing Checklists into the world of surgery and how that's used to save lives.
164. 00:12:41 Oh, well, knowing that it can be used in that way, and he's very convincing through this whole process, left me wanting to create Checklist for everything, Mike.
165. 00:12:55 And it's like there's some areas like, "Oh, I could do a Checklist here. Oh, I could do one here. Oh, I could do one here."
166. 00:13:01 And I know my wife is going to hate me for having Checklists for everything.
167. 00:13:07 So the one thing, I didn't write this down, but I think there's ends up needing to be a balance between what do you use a Checklist for and what do you not?
168. 00:13:17 So I haven't thrown that balance yet.
169. 00:13:19 Yeah, one of the things that I wrote down was that the medical examples that he uses because he's a surgeon, they really iterate the fact whether he's explicitly saying this or not,
170. 00:13:31 that Checklists are the difference between life and death.
171. 00:13:36 He used another story which I thought was really interesting about the B-17 bombers. Do you remember that one?
172. 00:13:44 Oh, yeah. So I'm a bit of an airplane, crazy. I like airplanes.
173. 00:13:50 I haven't got my pilot's license yet, but that's on my bucket list.
174. 00:13:53 So, yes. I'll let you tell the story though.
175. 00:13:55 Well, it probably resonated more with you then, so you can fix all the details that I messed up.
176. 00:14:00 Okay.
177. 00:14:01 The basic idea was that the military was trying to decide between a couple different types of planes and what became the B-17 flying fortress.
178. 00:14:09 That was expected to be the one that was going to be the technological marvel that was going to change the course of history.
179. 00:14:16 It could fly twice as far. It could carry twice as much.
180. 00:14:20 And when they brought it to the airbase for testing and basically to show it off, they had this guy who was really like the top of the line in terms of pilots who flew this thing.
181. 00:14:37 And he took off and everything was going great till he got several hundred feet in the air.
182. 00:14:42 And then the plane just turned left and crashed into the ground. And obviously him and I forget if there were other people on board, but they died.
183. 00:14:51 And they deconstructed what happened and they've identified that he had forgotten to flip a switch basically, which was really basic.
184. 00:15:02 And the reason that he forgot is because it had four engines instead of two.
185. 00:15:07 It was one of those things where a simple checklist, "Did you do this for all four engines?"
186. 00:15:12 Literally would have saved the guy's life. But at that point what they decided was that this wasn't safe for pilots to fly, so they went with the other ones which were more manageable before they understood that it was really something very, very simple.
187. 00:15:26 And the way to fix that was with the checklist.
188. 00:15:30 This is a story that I love because it's a bit morbid to say that you love it because a couple people died.
189. 00:15:37 I think there were five crew members and two of them died in the process.
190. 00:15:40 And the part that's interesting to me is that instead of assuming that there was something that could be done to make the plane flyable, they just assumed it was unsafe and went somewhere else.
191. 00:15:53 That's interesting to me that we just discarded this marvel of a machine simply because we don't understand it and it's too complex.
192. 00:16:02 And that's a recurring theme in the book that I found fascinating in that he pulls out a lot of highly complex situations.
193. 00:16:11 He talks a lot about airplanes in general just because the flight preflight checklist, we're all familiar with how airlines have checklists for everything.
194. 00:16:21 And it's mostly because the systems are so complex that there's no way you're going to remember it all.
195. 00:16:27 Like in this particular case, the pilot who was flying this plane was one of the best test pilots in the world and he couldn't fly this thing.
196. 00:16:35 So if he couldn't fly it, then how on earth are they supposed to expect just their everyday pilots to jump in and do it just fine?
197. 00:16:45 So that's where they come up with the whole checklist process and figure out how do we make this thing flyable?
198. 00:16:51 How do we make this thing safe?
199. 00:16:53 And whenever you go through this simple process of a checklist, which it's a very simple thing, just put together a checklist.
200. 00:17:01 But it's so much more than that and I've got some thoughts on how this ties into the last couple books we've had.
201. 00:17:07 There's some power in having things to remind you of things that are easy to forget.
202. 00:17:13 And I think that's the moral of this whole story and of the whole book in that our minds, when we're doing something the first time, can help us remember things quite well.
203. 00:17:22 But when you do it repeatedly, it's hard to recall all the little details because you can't remember if you did it this time or not.
204. 00:17:29 One of the things I was very vivid in my mind is, and it's kind of a cliche at this point, but did you close the garage door when you left the house?
205. 00:17:39 Did you do that?
206. 00:17:41 I remember I did it, but was that today or three days ago?
207. 00:17:45 I don't know how many times do I drive back to the house just to see if the garage door is shut.
208. 00:17:51 So it's simple things like that that you do repeatedly that it keeps you from forgetting the small things, and in this case, saving lives.
209. 00:18:01 By the way, not to go off on a tangent, but the garage door problem that resonates with me, and one of the things that I did to fix this, is I installed, we needed a new garage door opener.
210. 00:18:13 So what I did is I bought a Chamberlain myCue, it's a Wi-Fi garage door opener.
211. 00:18:19 Of course you do.
212. 00:18:21 Yeah, there's an app which will tell you your garage door is open, your garage door is closed, it's been closed for two hours, whatever.
213. 00:18:27 You can have it said you notifications if it opens unexpectedly, whatever.
214. 00:18:31 You can also open and close it from your phone.
215. 00:18:33 So I have more than once left the house forgetting to close the garage door, and at a stoplight, open up the phone, hit the button, and closed it for my phone.
216. 00:18:45 So that brings me a lot of peace of mind and is totally worth it in just the way my brain works, but you may want to check it out.
217. 00:18:53 So here's a question for you, if you didn't have that, would you remember to close it more often, or do you forget it more now that you have it?
218. 00:19:03 Does that make sense?
219. 00:19:05 Yeah, I think that the actual number of times that I have forgotten to close it is not very great.
220. 00:19:12 So it probably wouldn't make a difference in terms of whether I actually close it or not, but it definitely makes a difference in the peace of mind that I would have.
221. 00:19:20 So I'm leaving for a meeting, I don't have time necessarily to run home and check if I close the garage door by the time I think of it.
222. 00:19:27 And so in those situations, it's great to just look, confirm, okay, it's closed, and then I don't have to worry about it anymore.
223. 00:19:34 Fair enough.
224. 00:19:36 Versus calling your neighbor. Can you look across the road and see if I can.
225. 00:19:42 Yeah.
226. 00:19:43 To be honest, I don't even have phone information for a lot of our neighbors.
227. 00:19:49 Oh, really?
228. 00:19:50 Yeah, I think our neighborhood is a little bit different. Of course, I'm also not just outside a lot of times making those connections, but my wife knows most of our neighbors.
229. 00:20:02 I know a couple of them, but not well enough to be like, "Hey, go close my garage door for me."
230. 00:20:08 Yeah, no, ours are. So where we live across the road is a series of duplexes, but they're town home, you know, HOA, if you're familiar with all of that.
231. 00:20:20 Which means that most of our neighbors are retirees, and it's an older generation than us, so they love having our girls around for sure.
232. 00:20:28 But they often would call us or say, "Hey, can you come check our house? We're going to be gone for a week.
233. 00:20:34 Can you just go run through it, make sure everything's on and running?" Like they would get a hold of us that way.
234. 00:20:39 Well, that meant that we get into where we call each other.
235. 00:20:43 "Hey, there's a box in your front step that got there last night. Oh, okay, I'll go get it." Like we do that type of thing quite a bit.
236. 00:20:49 So I think we have kind of a unique relationship with our neighbors, but honestly they initiated it, not us.
237. 00:20:55 Like, we're not that good. We're not good neighbors. We're just nosy neighbors.
238. 00:21:00 We just answer the phone when they call us.
239. 00:21:05 Anyway, I digress.
240. 00:21:07 So the garage door problem, I would argue, would be the first type of problem that he articulates in the book.
241. 00:21:13 There's three different types. The first one is simple.
242. 00:21:16 And so the example he used there was like baking a cake following the recipe, remembering to close the garage door.
243. 00:21:24 The second one is complicated. And that example he used was like launching a rocket.
244. 00:21:29 It can be really difficult to figure it out, but once you figure it out, you can just rinse and repeat.
245. 00:21:35 And then the third type of problem is complex.
246. 00:21:39 And the example he used there was raising a kid where every single one is a little bit different.
247. 00:21:46 And it's really easy to see how a checklist can be used in the first two.
248. 00:21:52 But the third one takes a little bit of understanding the complexities of how basically checklist function as efficiency mechanisms to help us make right decisions.
249. 00:22:08 Like he talks about that the rest of the book. But the complex problems, that's what he deals with all the time in surgeries and things.
250. 00:22:16 There's things that will happen which are outside the norm and you have to figure out on the spot what is the thing that we do in this specific situation.
251. 00:22:25 So I really liked how he applied the checklist principle to just about anything that you can encounter because I hadn't really thought about it that way previously.
252. 00:22:38 And I think he does a good job of it too. There's so many stories he tells of situations where a checklist saved the day or where it could have saved the day.
253. 00:22:48 So it's interesting. I think he has a really good way of bringing this out. And it's one that he hit me home for me quite a bit because he's talking about construction and building skyscrapers and airplanes.
254. 00:23:01 And those two industries he reiterates a lot of scenarios from.
255. 00:23:06 And those are two that I understand quite a bit and I enjoy.
256. 00:23:11 So it was pretty easy for me to get engrossed in this book.
257. 00:23:14 I really appreciated it. But the one part that he brought up about building skyscrapers was the correlation between what used to be called master builders to, and I forget what he called the newer model.
258. 00:23:32 But essentially the way the master builder thing worked was that it used to be that someone was in charge.
259. 00:23:37 They did a lot of the design, they did a lot of the architecture, the engineering and pieces, and then they led the crew to make it all happen. They did all the little plumbing pieces, they did the structural supports, they did everything.
260. 00:23:48 And things have gotten so complex now that it just can't be done that way.
261. 00:23:55 You know, he showed some examples of how they built skyscrapers, which just first off the technology involved, just to do typical reporting and say, "I have an issue with this beam.
262. 00:24:05 The holes don't line up to put the support beam in."
263. 00:24:08 And the crew member just puts it into their device. I don't even remember what it was.
264. 00:24:13 And it kicks out the emails to all the people involved with that particular part of the building.
265. 00:24:17 "So you've got to be kidding me. How on earth do you get this to where I have a hole that doesn't line up and it knows who to send information to?"
266. 00:24:25 That just blew my mind that that was even possible.
267. 00:24:28 But I guess if you're going to build a skyscraper, you need it to be in line.
268. 00:24:33 And it's so bad. It's so dependent on it not falling that you really can't have a mistake.
269. 00:24:39 And he brings up the point that very few of these things fall if they ever fall.
270. 00:24:43 So I just, I don't know, I thought it was really interesting the correlation he made there.
271. 00:24:47 Yeah, I have to admit that when I read the term "Master Builder" as I instantly thought of the LEGO movie.
272. 00:24:52 But I haven't seen it. It's still on my list, but I haven't seen it. I really want to, though.
273. 00:24:57 Yeah, you should definitely check it out.
274. 00:25:00 My boys love it.
275. 00:25:02 And the Master Builders in the LEGO movie are people who know how to build anything.
276. 00:25:08 And so that's kind of the how I interpreted that term.
277. 00:25:13 In the past, he mentioned that Master Builders were the people who would oversee the entire project.
278. 00:25:18 And they would oversee all the different systems and make sure that they were all functioning the way that they were supposed to.
279. 00:25:24 And nowadays, like you don't do that. You have an electrician come and figure out the electrical systems.
280. 00:25:30 And you have a plumber come and figure out the plumbing systems.
281. 00:25:33 Like you don't have to have all the domain knowledge for all the things in order to build a skyscraper.
282. 00:25:40 And then obviously the software and stuff like that that supports it.
283. 00:25:43 Like that's the implementation of the checklist.
284. 00:25:47 And really what the point that I got out of that section of the book is that the checklist are great not to make sure that something is done.
285. 00:25:53 But to make sure that something is done correctly.
286. 00:25:55 But to make sure that discussions take place.
287. 00:25:58 I thought that was really cool where it's just like it the checklist, the points in the checklist weren't necessarily that this outcome had been achieved.
288. 00:26:06 But that they had talked to this specific person about this thing.
289. 00:26:10 I think there's a lot of application in that in a lot of different arenas where the communication is the thing that causes the breakdowns.
290. 00:26:22 And it causes in the case of a skyscraper, it might be the cause of the thing being structurally unsound and falling down and lots of people dying.
291. 00:26:30 The ramifications of not following a communications checklist like that in some of the stuff that I'm involved in isn't so life and death.
292. 00:26:39 But it definitely causes additional friction and it causes the momentum and the movement in whatever direction, whether that happens to be in my marriage.
293. 00:26:48 If my wife and I are not on the same page, if the communication hasn't taken place on specific things, it can just make everything just stop.
294. 00:26:56 And when that happens, it drives me crazy and I can usually trace it back to, "Oh yeah, we didn't communicate about this thing or the other."
295. 00:27:04 Which is frustrating, isn't it?
296. 00:27:06 Yes.
297. 00:27:07 I was going to say it's so frustrating because it's so simple to fix.
298. 00:27:12 And that's the whole idea behind the checklist is the things that need to happen are basic.
299. 00:27:17 You know them already, but you gloss over them and you don't do them a lot of times because your brain just doesn't pay attention to those little details.
300. 00:27:27 And so the checklist really functions as a support system just to make sure that, "Okay, we focused on this.
301. 00:27:32 Okay, now we can move on to the next thing, focus on that, move on to the next thing."
302. 00:27:35 Rather than trying to balance all this stuff in your head, it kind of goes back to the very first book we did, "Getting Things Done with David Allen."
303. 00:27:42 And if you're having ideas not holding them, that's what I view like not having a checklist as.
304. 00:27:47 As you're trying to remember all the different things that you have to do, all the eyes you got to dot, all the teas you got to cross, and invariably you're going to miss something.
305. 00:27:57 I made the correlation to brain chains pretty quick because he, in brain chains, Theo talks about the reflex versus reflective reflection brain,
306. 00:28:08 and your reflexes where you just operate off of instinct and your gut reaction to things, whereas your reflective mind is one that you really think through things.
307. 00:28:19 And when you do something new in brain chains, he talks about how when you're getting into a new habit or you're doing something for the first time,
308. 00:28:26 your reflective mind is taking over.
309. 00:28:29 It's the one that is in control because it requires a lot of focus and thought.
310. 00:28:34 The more you do it, it gets transferred over to your reflex brain because it's just a habit at that point.
311. 00:28:39 You don't have to think about it anymore.
312. 00:28:41 And when it moves over to that, you don't always notice, you don't have all the triggers and the memory points to recall if something happened or not.
313. 00:28:49 You just assume it did because it's habit and it always happens.
314. 00:28:52 So I made the quick jump to think that when we do something new, we're putting together a checklist for the first time.
315. 00:28:58 It seems a bit ludicrous to need it because you go through it so often, and it's like, "Well, this is just second nature. I just do it all the time."
316. 00:29:06 And it doesn't necessarily work that way because eventually it moves to your reflexive thinking, and you may think that you did something, but you may not have, because you've done it so many times.
317. 00:29:18 You just assume it's been done, but it may not have actually happened.
318. 00:29:21 That's where that checklist comes in to make sure it actually did happen because it gives you a point to stop and think about it, and as opposed to just assuming it happened.
319. 00:29:30 At least that was the correlation I made.
320. 00:29:32 Right. He says, "Do not assume things will work properly. Assume the worst and plan accordingly."
321. 00:29:38 And that's really the purpose that the checklist is supposed to...
322. 00:29:44 The role it's supposed to play. And you see that in a lot of the medical examples that he mentions. Like, something is going wrong.
323. 00:29:51 The patient is on the operating table, and if they don't act quickly, they're going to die.
324. 00:29:58 And they have a checklist in place because they've already assumed the worst and they plan accordingly.
325. 00:30:02 And they know they need to do this, this, this, and this to make sure that they can save the patient's life.
326. 00:30:07 And then the other thing in this section which really just iterates the whole...
327. 00:30:13 Like encapsulates the whole conversation that we've been having recently about this is trust the power of communication.
328. 00:30:19 Like, that really jumped out at me. All that needs to happen is that the communication needs to happen.
329. 00:30:25 And then the fact that you're communicating, assuming that you're doing it right, and there's very clear understanding, and everybody's on the same page,
330. 00:30:35 but if you follow the forum and you actually have the communication, then it's amazing how much of the other stuff just takes care of itself.
331. 00:30:43 Did you make the correlation? And I'm going to go back to master builders and try to make a correlation here.
332. 00:30:49 Because I got to thinking about this, and it hit me that there's a lot of folks who build online businesses that this applies to very directly.
333. 00:31:00 So if we can kind of translate this away from skyscrapers and surgery down to websites and productivity, essentially the way I saw it was that most blogs and most websites start with a master builder.
334. 00:31:14 You've got a simple blog, you've got one or two products that you're doing, and you may hire some pieces off to have like some design work done.
335. 00:31:22 But for the most part, you're in control and you're the one doing everything up front.
336. 00:31:26 Eventually, you get big enough that you need to start outsourcing or bringing in more people and it becomes a bigger complex system.
337. 00:31:36 And then you end up with something kind of like what Asian efficiency does, where you've got a bunch of products, you've got a lot of different people doing different pieces of it.
338. 00:31:44 So it requires a lot of people, but it's complex.
339. 00:31:47 And this is where some of the agile structures come in handy because they force the communication piece.
340. 00:31:54 You may have your checklist of things that you're putting together for the next week, but then it always ensures that you're having the communication points.
341. 00:32:01 At least that's how I started to see it, because it's interesting how if you start with something where one person is in control of everything and you start to bring more people in and you add more to it and the bigger and hairier it gets, the more complex it gets, which requires
342. 00:32:16 the checklist process and the communication points.
343. 00:32:19 Do you see that with Asian efficiency specifically?
344. 00:32:22 I know you've worked on both sides of that.
345. 00:32:25 Yeah, one of the things that I wrote down is that checklists are essentially SOPs.
346. 00:32:31 And that's something that we've really emphasized for a long time at Asian efficiency is the standard operating procedures or SOPs.
347. 00:32:39 And so that was kind of the light bulb moment for me. It was like, yeah, we are implementing checklists. We are trying to make sure that the communication happens regularly.
348. 00:32:47 And every time that something goes wrong, it's because that communication didn't happen.
349. 00:32:53 It's because I knew that I should talk to the team about this specific thing before we just move ahead with it.
350. 00:33:00 But maybe I didn't do that.
351. 00:33:02 And so I get into the middle of a situation. And once you make that initial decision, it goes downhill from there because then it's like, well, now I have to justify the fact that I did this.
352. 00:33:12 And a lot of times that can lead to even more trouble.
353. 00:33:15 And that's getting away maybe specifically from Asian efficiency, but just in general my experience with the checklist or lack of checklist and the breakdowns in communication.
354. 00:33:26 In fact, one of the quotes I wrote down that I loved from this book was that the biggest cause of serious error is a failure of communication.
355. 00:33:34 And that I can definitely attest to.
356. 00:33:37 Yeah.
357. 00:33:39 So recently I've taken on a role as director of IT at our church.
358. 00:33:45 And our church has gotten big enough that we've got a ton of cables and computers and just stuffs everywhere.
359. 00:33:51 And something I did almost immediately whenever I took that role was set up an internal forum.
360. 00:33:58 And if you follow me at all, you know I'm huge on discourse.
361. 00:34:01 So I set up a discourse instance.
362. 00:34:03 And we started using it internally as a tech team.
363. 00:34:07 So I'm ahead of that tech team.
364. 00:34:08 There's a few volunteers that work underneath the me in that.
365. 00:34:11 And all it did, the only thing this system does is create topics that we can talk about.
366. 00:34:19 And I simply asked the team to just check in on it roughly once a day or every couple days.
367. 00:34:26 And they get emails about it too so they can respond to things quicker if they want.
368. 00:34:29 But I just asked that they check in on it once every day or two.
369. 00:34:32 And that process by itself single handedly meant that we have accomplished literally about 15 times more in a period of about a month than what we did in the past year.
370. 00:34:48 It's just ridiculous how much stuff got done just because we could sit and talk about it in a unified place and have a number of conversations going on all at one time that wasn't overwhelming.
371. 00:35:00 That's all it is.
372. 00:35:01 It's purely communication and it allows us to do the asynchronous thing where we don't have to do it at the same time and we can just do it whenever.
373. 00:35:10 So it works out really well.
374. 00:35:12 And purely just so we can talk about something, someone's got an issue with something they tag us in it.
375. 00:35:17 Oh yeah, this is the answer to that because I know that or I don't know it.
376. 00:35:20 This person does.
377. 00:35:21 That simple process gets things done so much faster than just making an assumption or trying to make a decision.
378. 00:35:27 But you don't have the power to make a decision.
379. 00:35:29 You get this.
380. 00:35:30 I mean it gets to be a nightmare if you don't have some communication or conversation about something that's going on.
381. 00:35:37 So I totally get it. Having points in a checklist that is maybe a bit big and hairy just to ask the question, do we have everything covered here?
382. 00:35:44 Anything someone's concerned about?
383. 00:35:46 That simple question can go really, really far.
384. 00:35:49 Yep.
385. 00:35:50 And the checklist is written communication.
386. 00:35:53 Like my experience wants something in writing.
387. 00:35:56 There's a lot more clarity around something because you can refer back to it.
388. 00:36:00 And so like if you're, you could apply this to any area of life.
389. 00:36:05 Like if you are trying to get your organization, your team, your family, whatever to move in a specific direction, write it down.
390. 00:36:14 Because the fact that you have a vision, it's not the responsibility of everybody on your team, everybody in your organization, everybody underneath you so to speak, to understand your vision.
391. 00:36:27 It is your responsibility as the owner of the vision to communicate it to other people.
392. 00:36:33 And I was at the Sean West Conference and he mentioned that the point at which you know the vision has been communicated is when you start to hear your vision coming out of the mouths of other people.
393. 00:36:47 And that is really, that's a revelation to me is that like I don't communicate my vision enough.
394. 00:36:58 I need to get it out there because if I don't get it out there, if I don't write it down more consistently, if I don't keep it front and center in the different teams and organizations that I'm a part of, then I can't expect other people to remember that.
395. 00:37:15 He talks about how memory and judgment are unreliable.
396. 00:37:19 If you communicate the vision one month and then you wait three weeks and you ask somebody, "Hey, what was that thing that I told you in our last team meeting?"
397. 00:37:26 It's going to have morphed and evolved because they're not going to remember it correctly.
398. 00:37:30 And I'm not going to remember it correctly if likewise if I'm in the other situation.
399. 00:37:33 If I'm a leader who wants me to be on board with a vision, then I need to make sure that I completely understand it at all times if I'm going to run with this thing.
400. 00:37:43 And that comes back to my follow up of taking responsibility for the relationships.
401. 00:37:48 I could say, "Well, yes, my leader's responsibility to make sure that they communicate the vision to me."
402. 00:37:53 But I can't control whether they communicate the vision to me.
403. 00:37:56 So in that specific instance, what I'm going to do is I'm going to remind myself every week, every day, if I have to check in with the leader, make sure that I'm understanding specifically what's expected of me.
404. 00:38:12 There was a part in this, because I get what you're saying, and I think it makes a lot of sense to just, "What is the vision and where does it come down through everything that's going on?"
405. 00:38:22 There's something that is extremely helpful that they do really well with planes and the checklist that they do for their pilots, in that when you learn something new or say your vision or mission changes or something, a new piece of knowledge comes up that they need to adjust.
406. 00:38:39 They need to make a course correction because of.
407. 00:38:42 And what they do in the airlines is they simply change the checklist that they're using for that specific scenario.
408. 00:38:49 And then they distribute that checklist.
409. 00:38:51 People make some slight revisions to it if they need to, and they run with it from there.
410. 00:38:55 And that's how they distribute all the scientific knowledge that they come up with things.
411. 00:38:59 He gave a couple examples of how they do that.
412. 00:39:01 But I found that interesting that if something changes, how do we go about getting it throughout the industry?
413. 00:39:09 And most industries, it just disappears.
414. 00:39:11 It's like, "Oh, that's a fun article. I've got this thing for scientific articles."
415. 00:39:15 You see all this stuff and you read it.
416. 00:39:17 It's like, "Oh, that's fascinating. I wonder why no one does anything about it."
417. 00:39:21 Well, no one knows about it. There's no way to get it across the system.
418. 00:39:24 If I think about agriculture, there's zero for checklist because one, they're all opinionated farmers and they don't want to do it.
419. 00:39:30 Someone else tells them to do.
420. 00:39:32 But they've got their own ways of doing things.
421. 00:39:34 But there's no checklist for it because every field's different in that case.
422. 00:39:37 But there are some things that you could do to make that a little bit better and to unify things a little bit better.
423. 00:39:44 But at the same time, there is no way to translate the new research and the new findings down through the sector like they do in airlines.
424. 00:39:54 Because they have that nailed down.
425. 00:39:56 Like, they checklist for the core of how they run a plane. That's just how they do things.
426. 00:40:00 So if something new comes up, you know, I got ice in a fuel tank that appears and it only happens in this one specific scenario.
427. 00:40:07 How do I let all my pilots know about it?
428. 00:40:10 And they have a way to do that.
429. 00:40:12 And that might be the one and only industry that has that figured out is how to translate the knowledge that they come up with the research down through all the people who need it.
430. 00:40:20 True. Yeah. But a totally different example that he used in the book and really an example, in my opinion, of the fact that you don't have to get this stuff implemented necessarily industry-wide.
431. 00:40:34 Like, you could apply this to your specific situation to achieve higher excellence is the story about Van Halen.
432. 00:40:40 So I love this.
433. 00:40:42 And I've heard this before. So I really enjoyed this part.
434. 00:40:45 Yeah. So Van Halen, they had the, I think the point that he made in the book is that they were one of the first ones that really went like all out with their shows.
435. 00:40:56 And they had semis worth of equipment that they would bring whenever they did a live show.
436. 00:41:02 And one of the things that they would put in the checklist that they would give the venue as part of the contract was that there had to be a bowl of M&Ms in the green room with all of the brown M&Ms reading.
437. 00:41:14 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
438. 00:41:19 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
439. 00:41:24 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
440. 00:41:29 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
441. 00:41:35 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
442. 00:41:45 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
443. 00:41:50 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
444. 00:41:55 And they were like, "Oh, I'm going to be a little bit more interested in the show."
445. 00:42:00 And you could say they canceled the show because the brown M&Ms hadn't been removed, but that's not really the point.
446. 00:42:07 That's not the reason that they had that on the checklist.
447. 00:42:10 It was the trigger that alerted them that, "Oh, these people aren't paying attention to the details."
448. 00:42:15 And so we need to make sure that if this show is going to achieve the standards that we've set,
449. 00:42:22 we have to make sure that all of these things have been taken care of.
450. 00:42:27 And there's too many on the list for them to go through and check them all themselves.
451. 00:42:32 Right. Every single time, correct.
452. 00:42:34 So if they go backstage and the brown M&Ms are removed, perfect.
453. 00:42:37 Because that's a simple thing. It's a small thing.
454. 00:42:40 And if they've paid attention to the small things and the big things are going to be fine,
455. 00:42:44 but if they haven't paid attention to that, then they know they have to go back and double check everything.
456. 00:42:49 So between the knowledge transfer pieces and checking to make sure that you go through standard protocol,
457. 00:42:59 there are some things I've been thinking through as an IT director now.
458. 00:43:04 I've got a group of people that may need to do things on occasion, but they don't do them frequently.
459. 00:43:10 So, you know, the Wi-Fi in the building goes down. What do you do about it?
460. 00:43:14 Well, me, I know what to do about it because I help build the thing.
461. 00:43:17 And I know where all the pieces are. I know what to check.
462. 00:43:19 However, if I have someone from the building crew that is there and the Wi-Fi goes down,
463. 00:43:25 there are some things they can do to check that.
464. 00:43:29 So that's something I've been thinking through. This is one of the action items I have,
465. 00:43:32 is to have a way for us to keep track of what's the checklist on Wi-Fi goes down.
466. 00:43:39 How do I install a printer driver? You know, simple things.
467. 00:43:41 I mean, this is very basic information.
468. 00:43:43 But just having ways to keep track of that. And then if something changes,
469. 00:43:47 you know, I change the subnets in the building.
470. 00:43:49 I know that's probably over a lot of people's heads.
471. 00:43:52 But if I change the VLANs and the subnets, how do I let the tech team know about that
472. 00:43:57 so that they're aware of their troubleshooting in the future without me?
473. 00:44:00 I want them to have that ability because there's going to be some scenarios
474. 00:44:04 where they're doing some specialty stuff without me.
475. 00:44:07 So I need ways to convey that information.
476. 00:44:09 And I just told them, it's like, I'm going to be putting together these checklists.
477. 00:44:12 Whenever I explained it to them, they were all on board right away.
478. 00:44:15 You know, they're techies. They like this stuff.
479. 00:44:17 But just explaining it to them, it seemed to be something they were very receptive to.
480. 00:44:23 So it's an easy way for us to update from a knowledge standpoint.
481. 00:44:28 If I change something or they change something, a password has changed,
482. 00:44:31 we have a way to share that information.
483. 00:44:33 So I think there's a lot of power there.
484. 00:44:35 I think as long as we keep it updated and we're willing to go through
485. 00:44:39 and check things whenever we make edits or, you know, if something breaks and falls apart, fails,
486. 00:44:46 just being able to do that post mortem on it and then updating the actual standard procedure
487. 00:44:52 so that way we can stay up to date.
488. 00:44:55 That's my goal anyway. I haven't fully implemented it yet.
489. 00:44:57 So I have no idea if it's worthwhile, but that's the idea.
490. 00:45:00 And reading this book makes me think it's a really good idea.
491. 00:45:03 Right.
492. 00:45:04 Well, yeah, this is going kind of out of order on our list here.
493. 00:45:07 But one of the things that I wrote down was a quote that he said,
494. 00:45:10 "We rarely investigate our failures."
495. 00:45:12 In my response to that was really?
496. 00:45:15 Like, when something goes wrong, you don't want to deconstruct it and figure out why it went wrong.
497. 00:45:20 Like, that is just against every fiber of my being.
498. 00:45:25 Like, I want to fix it.
499. 00:45:27 And obviously that's where the checklist come in.
500. 00:45:29 Like, you figure out what went wrong and then you adapt the checklist so the next time that it doesn't go wrong.
501. 00:45:36 But that was kind of shocking to me that basically what I interpreted that as saying is that that's not the norm for most people.
502. 00:45:45 So I guess I'm just weird.
503. 00:45:47 Well, I know I'm weird because I'm a developer and it's like, "Okay, if it's busted, I got to figure out why."
504. 00:45:52 So I can't just put a band out of it and walk away.
505. 00:45:56 I got to go figure out why it broke because that way I can prevent it from happening again.
506. 00:46:01 That's just how I do things.
507. 00:46:03 So I end up translating that throughout my entire life much to my wife's chagrin.
508. 00:46:08 But just always looking for why did this happen and how do I keep it from happening again?
509. 00:46:14 Like, that just seems second nature to me.
510. 00:46:17 But so many times I've just seen people like, "Just go figure out why it didn't work."
511. 00:46:24 And then you don't have to worry about it again.
512. 00:46:26 "Oh, I don't have time to do that right now."
513. 00:46:27 Like, "You've got to be kidding me. This is well worth your time."
514. 00:46:30 Like, "Go do this."
515. 00:46:32 But we don't have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over.
516. 00:46:36 Yes, and that doesn't make any sense.
517. 00:46:38 And it just, it eats up so much time to not figure out what went wrong.
518. 00:46:45 I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me.
519. 00:46:47 Yeah, I'm in a situation right now where there's, you know, a breakdown in communication
520. 00:46:54 and I'm trying to articulate, "Well, this is how I think we got here. This is what we should do to fix it."
521. 00:47:00 And the response I got was, "I don't like arguing with you."
522. 00:47:04 And I'm like, "I'm not trying to argue. I'm just trying to resolve this. I want to fix it so we can move forward."
523. 00:47:11 And it's kind of like, "Well, what do I do?"
524. 00:47:16 I don't think it's fair necessarily to project that we need to investigate every single failure.
525. 00:47:23 We need to figure out why things went wrong, even though that's the way that I'm wired.
526. 00:47:26 If I'm going to take responsibility for relationships, then I need to figure out myself, the correct way,
527. 00:47:33 to accomplish everybody's goals and desires in this specific situation.
528. 00:47:38 My desire is that this doesn't happen again.
529. 00:47:42 And what can I do on my part to help facilitate that, but also I've got to be careful because I can't just say,
530. 00:47:49 "This is wrong."
531. 00:47:50 I tend to see things very black and white. And like we talked about, I don't know if it was last episode or maybe a couple episodes ago,
532. 00:47:59 where sometimes the right thing is being willing to say that you were wrong, even if you don't really believe that you were wrong,
533. 00:48:07 just to take responsibility not for the fact that something went wrong, but the responsibility for making the situation better.
534. 00:48:15 Even though if you don't fix it the way that you think with a checklist and your analytical brain says that this is the way to do it,
535. 00:48:23 there is a chance that this might happen again, like ultimately, because productivity is about people
536. 00:48:31 and you have to work with other people, that has to be okay. And that is hard for me to reconcile sometimes.
537. 00:48:40 I've found that I have to drop caveats before I say something in a lot of scenarios, because I'm just wired differently than most.
538. 00:48:47 I think you and I are fairly close, so we get along really well.
539. 00:48:51 He's like, "Okay, just hit me with your list. I'm okay. I'll just answer and do this quick."
540. 00:48:56 I'm totally great with it. I love that.
541. 00:48:59 I've learned that there are a number of people that I work with now that that's not okay to them.
542. 00:49:05 It's not something that they're used to, but what I'll just do is, I'll say a caveat.
543. 00:49:13 It's like, "Okay, I got a list for you. I'm just going to hit you rapid fire. Stop me if you want me to stop.
544. 00:49:18 This is just the way I work."
545. 00:49:20 Nothing, no emotional thing here. I just have a list I need to get through and we don't have a lot of time.
546. 00:49:25 For some reason, if I give that caveat, people are a lot more receptive to it, or in your case, I think.
547. 00:49:33 I don't fully understand all of it, obviously. I'm coming at this kind of blind.
548. 00:49:37 Whenever I've got situations where something went wrong and someone doesn't really want to do that post-mortem,
549. 00:49:43 what I typically do is just say, "I don't really care who's fault it is or what went wrong on who's end,
550. 00:49:51 but I don't want it to happen again." This is just the way that my brain works.
551. 00:49:56 I just want to figure out if there's something that we can do to prevent this from happening again in the future
552. 00:50:01 so that we're all better off in the long run. No hard feelings here, but we just need to figure out where things broke down
553. 00:50:08 so that I don't have to deal with this again in the future. This is my own way of coming at it,
554. 00:50:12 because I just want to figure out how we can put a system together so it doesn't creep up again.
555. 00:50:17 Not everybody's receptive to that, obviously, but it just seems to be, if I put that caveat out there before I ever say anything,
556. 00:50:24 people are usually a little more receptive to it, but that's me, and I'm odd, and I'm aware of that.
557. 00:50:31 Right, I may have to try that.
558. 00:50:35 I don't like the idea of caveats because I think most people use it as just saying,
559. 00:50:44 and then that's licensed to say whatever they want to say.
560. 00:50:47 Yeah, I hate that.
561. 00:50:48 I would rather just communicate what I want to say in a way that's not mean, and that communicates my desires, my intentions,
562. 00:51:01 the outcome that I want to achieve in a way that doesn't step on people's toes, but yeah, obviously I've got some room to grow there.
563. 00:51:12 I just make sure there's self-deprecation in it.
564. 00:51:15 I make fun of myself.
565. 00:51:17 I'm really sorry.
566. 00:51:18 My head doesn't work that way.
567. 00:51:20 I just can't think that well.
568. 00:51:21 You're way ahead of me on this.
569. 00:51:23 I just need you to bear with me and help me get there.
570. 00:51:26 I tend to just do that because I know how I work, and if I can explain to someone else the way that I operate,
571. 00:51:35 it helps them work with me, even though I know I'm sometimes the pain, or let's be honest here.
572. 00:51:43 Most of the time, I'm the one that's the pain.
573. 00:51:45 If I'm aware of that, and I know that I'm the one that's going to be creating some of the difficulties here,
574. 00:51:53 you and I have had a lot of conversations that we know that these aren't actually difficulties.
575. 00:51:56 These are actually better off.
576. 00:51:58 What is our mission?
577. 00:51:59 What is the standard operating procedure here?
578. 00:52:01 We know that those are very good things and create quality, more consistent work, but to a lot of people,
579. 00:52:08 it's just a difficult process that's not helpful.
580. 00:52:12 It's just extra stuff that they don't want to do.
581. 00:52:14 I get that, and as long as I can present it in a way that I just can't operate that way,
582. 00:52:19 I don't have the way I typically pose it, my mind isn't that good.
583. 00:52:24 I can't remember all the steps.
584. 00:52:26 I just can't recall everything, and my focus is not as good as yours.
585. 00:52:31 I can't stay on task that long, so I need some help.
586. 00:52:34 That's how I pose it.
587. 00:52:36 I can't do what you're saying you're going to do.
588. 00:52:39 In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "I know you can't do this either.
589. 00:52:43 You just think you can."
590. 00:52:45 But I'm not going to say that out loud.
591. 00:52:48 Yeah, I think ultimately a big part of this book, and this is a struggle that he articulates.
592. 00:52:56 He talks about how he's got all the research that shows that the checklist are effective
593. 00:53:04 and that they improve your outcomes without any increase in your skill.
594. 00:53:08 But still, it's hard to convince people to buy into the checklist.
595. 00:53:13 He talked about how a lot of surgeons, even after they did a study, they said that,
596. 00:53:19 "Yes, this is beneficial, but it's much smaller percentage of them were actually going to use it."
597. 00:53:24 They did the pilot program with eight different hospitals in places like London, Tanzania,
598. 00:53:32 Jordan, New Zealand.
599. 00:53:35 What they found was that they reduced the major complications by using the checklist by 36%.
600. 00:53:40 They reduced deaths by 47%.
601. 00:53:43 93% of the surgeons said they'd want the checklist used if they were the ones that were being operated on.
602. 00:53:52 They were convinced of the effectiveness, but they just didn't care enough to use it themselves.
603. 00:53:58 That ultimately is where the vision comes in.
604. 00:54:03 How do you communicate?
605. 00:54:04 I don't have an answer for this, but this is next steps for me.
606. 00:54:09 If I'm going to apply this principle in my own life, I have to figure this out.
607. 00:54:13 How do I communicate the effectiveness of this approach if this is something that I really want to use in any given situation?
608. 00:54:19 Then it's on me to communicate the rationale why it should be used.
609. 00:54:24 I can't just say, "Well, this is what we're doing," or "This is the way that I work."
610. 00:54:29 I don't think in some of the situations it's enough to caveat it and say, "My brain isn't good enough to do it that way.
611. 00:54:35 Let's do it this way instead."
612. 00:54:37 I have to get buy-in from other people and really that comes down to selling the idea.
613. 00:54:43 I think a lot of people think of selling or sales orientation.
614. 00:54:46 Maybe it's called as like you're trying to pedal a product, but it's so much more than that.
615. 00:54:52 Everybody needs sales skills because you need to be able to believe in an idea and communicate it effectively if you want to be any sort of leader in any arena.
616. 00:55:02 One of the most telling pieces of this whole and the effectiveness of Checklist I think is what you were just talking about.
617. 00:55:10 The surgeons who put these Checklists in place, and they put together this basic, like a safe surgery Checklist,
618. 00:55:17 and the surgeons who used it were not overwhelmingly positive that it was a good thing to have.
619. 00:55:26 They thought it helped save some things, but they didn't think it was necessary.
620. 00:55:29 I mean, if you look at the numbers on it, but if you flip it and say, "If you're the one that's under the knife,
621. 00:55:34 do you want the surgeon to use the Checklist?"
622. 00:55:36 Only a handful said no.
623. 00:55:39 Out of everybody, it was overwhelming. They all said, "Yes."
624. 00:55:43 So you don't want to use it, but you want everyone else to use it.
625. 00:55:46 You think you're better than everyone else, but if you're the one that's under, you don't trust them enough, so you want them to use it.
626. 00:55:53 To me, that would be the indicators like, "Oh, if I want them to use it, maybe I should use it."
627. 00:55:58 To me, the quick and easy correlation there, but they didn't make that correlation.
628. 00:56:04 This is direct to me.
629. 00:56:06 It's the same thing that we saw in Brainchains, where he's talking about the number of people who think that texting and driving is a terrible idea,
630. 00:56:15 yet a far higher percentage of people actually text and drive because they overestimate their own abilities.
631. 00:56:21 So it was kind of interesting reading this right on the heels of Brainchains, because if there is one person or one character type, I guess,
632. 00:56:30 if you were going to identify, if there was one occupation that would really be confident in their own abilities, it would be surgeons.
633. 00:56:40 Right.
634. 00:56:41 I think there's a lot of confidence in surgeons. You almost have to.
635. 00:56:48 Exactly.
636. 00:56:49 It's part of the job description.
637. 00:56:51 Yeah.
638. 00:56:52 To say that you need a checklist to make sure that you do everything, it's rather insulting if you stop thinking about it.
639. 00:56:59 Exactly.
640. 00:57:00 It's about the correlation I have here is that if someone came up to me and said, "Do you have a checklist to make sure that you built a server for a website correctly?"
641. 00:57:10 What do you mean I need a checklist for that? I do this enough and I know it well enough.
642. 00:57:15 Why on earth would I need a checklist for that?
643. 00:57:18 Hmm.
644. 00:57:19 Don't insult me with that.
645. 00:57:20 That's my gut reaction.
646. 00:57:22 But, of course, me being me, of course I have a checklist for that.
647. 00:57:26 I'll forget steps if I don't have it written down.
648. 00:57:28 Absolutely. Yes, I do.
649. 00:57:30 Because I know that I'll forget something.
650. 00:57:32 That's something I've done for a long time.
651. 00:57:35 Checklists are something in the productivity world are kind of second nature.
652. 00:57:38 We've been doing them for a long time and we just know all of GTD is lists.
653. 00:57:42 That's just how we do things.
654. 00:57:44 But when it comes to things that are repeated, templated processes that we use over and over again,
655. 00:57:50 sometimes it's easy to say, "I don't need that because I know it well enough that I'm going to just do it off of habit."
656. 00:57:55 That's exactly when you need to have it.
657. 00:57:58 Yes, it might feel insulting.
658. 00:58:01 But that's the exact moment when you're going to need that checklist.
659. 00:58:04 Because then you're going to forget something if you don't.
660. 00:58:06 Right.
661. 00:58:07 So I've asked you then, "What would you consider your server checklist?
662. 00:58:12 Would that be the do confirm checklist or the redo checklist?"
663. 00:58:16 Yeah, that's...
664. 00:58:18 For me, it's a redo.
665. 00:58:20 So the difference between the two.
666. 00:58:21 Do confirm.
667. 00:58:23 You go through and you do a whole process because you know it really well.
668. 00:58:26 And you go to the checklist and you make sure that you got it all done.
669. 00:58:30 The other one is the redo.
670. 00:58:32 And you read an item and then you do it.
671. 00:58:34 Then you read the next item and then you do it.
672. 00:58:36 So for me, the server checklist is a redo because if it's not done in a specific order,
673. 00:58:42 sometimes things can go wrong.
674. 00:58:44 Like, "I need certain packages installed before other packages can be installed."
675. 00:58:49 So it has to be in a certain order.
676. 00:58:52 Kind of straightforward.
677. 00:58:54 At least for me, you just work your way down the list.
678. 00:58:56 To me, the ones that would be like a do confirm or something like shutting down the house for the night,
679. 00:59:01 locking the doors, closing the windows.
680. 00:59:03 You know, in this time of the year, watering the Christmas tree, like some things like that.
681. 00:59:07 It doesn't really matter what order you do them in.
682. 00:59:09 You just need to make sure that they all get done.
683. 00:59:11 To me, that's the place where this whole do confirm concept can fit in because, you know,
684. 00:59:16 the order doesn't matter.
685. 00:59:18 At least that was my interpretation of it.
686. 00:59:20 Right.
687. 00:59:22 So how many items are on your redo checklist for setting up a server?
688. 00:59:27 Way too many.
689. 00:59:28 Let me look.
690. 00:59:31 There are 58.
691. 00:59:34 Okay.
692. 00:59:35 Yeah.
693. 00:59:36 So that was one of the things that he said was in page 123 that you should keep your checklist
694. 00:59:40 short, five to nine items to avoid short cutting.
695. 00:59:43 I kind of think that that applies more so to the do confirm checklist though, more so than
696. 00:59:49 the redo checklist.
697. 00:59:51 I think that there's still some benefit.
698. 00:59:53 If you were to, you could probably break your server setup checklist down into different
699. 00:59:56 sections.
700. 00:59:57 Those would, you know, you could classify those as separate checklists, but I think that when
701. 01:00:02 it comes to just following a recipe, so to speak, make sure that you do everything exactly
702. 01:00:07 the way you're supposed to do it.
703. 01:00:09 And it's okay to go beyond that five to nine items where it can get hairy is when you're
704. 01:00:15 trying to remember as you're doing things, ten items or more, and then you come back and
705. 01:00:20 you confirm it, you realize that, oh, I forgot half of the stuff I was supposed to do because
706. 01:00:24 there's so many things on this checklist.
707. 01:00:26 Yeah.
708. 01:00:27 I agree with that because I have a lot of templated projects and a lot of checklists that
709. 01:00:32 are run in that do confirm process and rarely are those less than ten items.
710. 01:00:41 Most of those are 30 plus because they're very specific tasks that need done most of the
711. 01:00:46 time in a specific order, and I just don't want to forget them.
712. 01:00:51 So I, yeah, I break that particular, I saw that and I thought it was interesting that
713. 01:00:55 he made that distinction, but I think you're right.
714. 01:00:58 I think if it's a case where for the most part, you're going to remember it and you're
715. 01:01:02 going to work off of your memory when you do it.
716. 01:01:04 I think that's where that can come in or if it's a scenario where it needs to happen
717. 01:01:09 extremely fast and most of it is specialized.
718. 01:01:13 If it's something that needs to happen really fast, like trying to restart an engine on
719. 01:01:16 a jet, you don't have 12 minutes to work through that.
720. 01:01:21 You have 30 seconds to work through that.
721. 01:01:24 So it can't be 50 items long because you're not going to get like you're going to spend
722. 01:01:28 more time reading than you are doing, you need to be able to just say, okay, check the
723. 01:01:32 flaps, like you need to be able to just say that.
724. 01:01:35 Well, what does that mean?
725. 01:01:36 You can spell it out, but the pilot knows what that means.
726. 01:01:39 You don't need to spell out all the details.
727. 01:01:41 You want to be able to read it as fast as you can and run through it.
728. 01:01:44 I think that's why he wants it really short.
729. 01:01:46 Yeah, and on page 138 he talks about how cutting the non-killer items is the hardest
730. 01:01:51 part.
731. 01:01:52 And the note that I made with that is that the longer the checklist is, the more difficult
732. 01:01:57 it is to use, the more friction there is, the more you don't trust that specific system,
733. 01:02:02 the more likely you are to just say, I remember how to do this and not go back to the checklist.
734. 01:02:07 But I do think it's important to just call out the difference between do confirm and
735. 01:02:12 redo because you build them differently and you treat them differently.
736. 01:02:15 Yeah, definitely.
737. 01:02:17 Just knowing that you've got something that you can come back to and then just make sure
738. 01:02:20 it all got done, then it means you can work off of your habits, but you can use that
739. 01:02:27 when you're done doing something.
740. 01:02:28 Like, it's something you just pull up, you know, if you've got an evening checklist
741. 01:02:31 to close up the house.
742. 01:02:32 Well, I can go do all of that.
743. 01:02:34 I don't need to pull it up and read through it while I'm doing it.
744. 01:02:37 I just go do everything.
745. 01:02:38 And then before I turn off the light at night, I just run through it and make sure it all
746. 01:02:42 got done.
747. 01:02:43 It's just that simple.
748. 01:02:45 Whereas if you have a redo, you're pulling it up before you get started as opposed to
749. 01:02:50 when you're done.
750. 01:02:51 Like, just the timing of it can make a big difference.
751. 01:02:53 Right.
752. 01:02:54 And for either of them, I would say that the principle, just like tasks to break it down
753. 01:02:59 as far as you logically can to make it very clear what you're supposed to do with this
754. 01:03:03 specific item is going to be beneficial.
755. 01:03:07 Now I know you use the example of check flaps where the pilot doesn't need to know all
756. 01:03:11 the different things, maybe that pertain to that.
757. 01:03:14 But check flaps is very simple.
758. 01:03:15 It's very actionable.
759. 01:03:16 You know, specifically what you're supposed to do.
760. 01:03:19 Right.
761. 01:03:20 Right.
762. 01:03:21 You know, it's kind of a tough balance to strike there because you want to spell it out in
763. 01:03:25 detail.
764. 01:03:27 You want it to be easy to understand and know what needs done, but you don't want it to
765. 01:03:32 get too long.
766. 01:03:33 You got to find the balance between spelling out enough detail to know exactly what to
767. 01:03:37 do, but not overdoing it.
768. 01:03:39 So yeah, I think there's a bit of attention between those two.
769. 01:03:43 So it'd be easy to get caught up.
770. 01:03:44 You know, if you're trying to put these together, it'd be easy to get lost, trying to figure
771. 01:03:47 out where do I draw this line?
772. 01:03:50 Whereas it doesn't have to be that complicated.
773. 01:03:52 You just have to give yourself enough, but not too much.
774. 01:03:56 Yeah.
775. 01:03:57 So action items?
776. 01:03:59 Yeah.
777. 01:04:00 One last thing here, because they did put together this safe surgery checklist and it
778. 01:04:05 was a fairly short checklist overall.
779. 01:04:09 And he ends the whole book with a story of how using this checklist saved a man's life
780. 01:04:15 because he made a mistake.
781. 01:04:17 Right.
782. 01:04:19 And first off, he's a surgeon.
783. 01:04:22 So his stories are quite gripping and tough to, in some cases, it's a bit graphic, even
784. 01:04:30 though it's words.
785. 01:04:32 And in other cases, it's like, oh, wow, this is really, this will really get you stopped
786. 01:04:37 and really make you stop and think about this.
787. 01:04:39 So I thought his last story about how he saved a man's life because of this checklist
788. 01:04:44 was the culmination of everything, of course.
789. 01:04:47 But having something as basic as a small checklist, just to make sure he had things
790. 01:04:52 like blood on hand, it makes things really come to life when you can see how even someone
791. 01:04:59 who is confident in controlling, maybe not controlling, is probably the wrong word, but
792. 01:05:04 someone who has control of the power inside of an operating room can rely on something
793. 01:05:10 as simple as a checklist to save someone's life.
794. 01:05:13 I mean, there's a lot of value in seeing the power of how these lists can be used.
795. 01:05:17 So anyway, he showed a lot of numbers on how this checklist made a huge impact in medicine
796. 01:05:23 and that really resonated with me.
797. 01:05:25 What was interesting about the last story is that it was a mistake that he made that
798. 01:05:31 almost cost the patient his life.
799. 01:05:34 I know.
800. 01:05:35 So talk about self-deprecation.
801. 01:05:36 I mean, he's ending it with a story about how he almost killed a guy.
802. 01:05:39 Yeah.
803. 01:05:40 Yup.
804. 01:05:41 Okay.
805. 01:05:42 So now I'm good for action items.
806. 01:05:45 You may go first.
807. 01:05:46 You want to go first.
808. 01:05:47 You started with follow up.
809. 01:05:48 Yeah.
810. 01:05:49 Well, I've only got one item here and that is an end of day checklist because I believe
811. 01:05:57 that if I instituted a checklist of just these are the things that I have to do before I
812. 01:06:02 shut down work mode for the day, then I will have a much easier time disconnecting from
813. 01:06:08 everything work related.
814. 01:06:11 And so the specific action item I want to have in place by the next time we record is that
815. 01:06:16 I have that checklist and I am using it on a daily basis.
816. 01:06:22 Awesome.
817. 01:06:25 So it's is this similar to like the shutdown ritual only in checklist form?
818. 01:06:29 Yeah, kind of, I guess.
819. 01:06:31 I just want specifically a checklist boxes.
820. 01:06:34 I can check that say, yep, done that, done that, done that, done that.
821. 01:06:38 Okay, now I can feel good about completely disconnecting, knowing that I didn't leave
822. 01:06:44 any open loops.
823. 01:06:45 There's nothing that people are waiting for me to get back to them about.
824. 01:06:50 And then I'm free to just go have fun with my kids or go be wholly invested and attentive
825. 01:06:56 to the thing that I'm going to do next.
826. 01:06:58 Awesome.
827. 01:06:59 Cool.
828. 01:07:00 So similar to that, I have for a long time had, it was it existed a morning and an evening
829. 01:07:09 checklist of things I do when I first get up and things I do right before I go to bed.
830. 01:07:14 And it's something that a lot of people talk about a morning ritual and the importance
831. 01:07:20 of that or an evening ritual and the importance of that.
832. 01:07:23 These are essentially that in checklist form.
833. 01:07:26 But I've not used them on a daily basis because they were habit.
834. 01:07:33 I didn't have to think about them.
835. 01:07:34 I didn't think it was important to use them.
836. 01:07:36 Well, this convinced me otherwise.
837. 01:07:39 So I started pulling them out.
838. 01:07:40 I'm not always great at it quite yet, but I like to work through those each time.
839. 01:07:45 And what I quickly learned is that I sometimes forget things that I end up not doing.
840. 01:07:51 And that's a bit frustrating.
841. 01:07:53 But the other thing I realized was kind of like that knowledge transfer piece that we
842. 01:07:57 talked about.
843. 01:07:59 If I have these in place and I want to make an alteration to what I do at night before
844. 01:08:03 I go to bed, I can just change the list and not worry about it and know that I'm going
845. 01:08:07 to see it tomorrow.
846. 01:08:08 Even if it's not something that I feel like I need because my memory works off of everything,
847. 01:08:15 this gives me something to rely on and make sure it gets done.
848. 01:08:17 And the prime example of this is that recently put up our Christmas tree and put up some
849. 01:08:21 lights.
850. 01:08:22 And in the house, and I want to make sure I get those turned off and water the tree and
851. 01:08:27 stuff like that at night before I go to bed.
852. 01:08:29 I just added them to this evening checklist.
853. 01:08:31 Now I'll pull them off when we take the tree down, but it's nice to have that on that list
854. 01:08:35 just to make sure it gets done because I know I'm going to go through it before I go to
855. 01:08:38 bed.
856. 01:08:39 Anyway, just long story short, that's the action item is to make sure I'm using those.
857. 01:08:43 The other one I've got is one I mentioned already is those checklists for my IT role.
858. 01:08:48 I think there's a lot of power in building some of those out.
859. 01:08:50 That's probably going to be something that's just a never ending piece.
860. 01:08:54 But I'll check in next time because I'm going to have a one or two of these that gets put
861. 01:08:58 in place just to see how it works.
862. 01:09:02 And one that I didn't write down, I probably should.
863. 01:09:05 And I haven't really talked about this on the podcast mic, which is probably sad.
864. 01:09:10 But my wife and I are expecting our third girl to come meet us very soon.
865. 01:09:16 So soon that we will probably have her in our arms before this releases.
866. 01:09:21 So that's kind of interesting, but I haven't talked about that.
867. 01:09:24 Anyway, what I started to do because I finished this book is I realized there's a long list
868. 01:09:28 of things that I need to do as soon as my wife says it's time.
869. 01:09:33 So I have started building out this list of, okay, I need to call my mother-in-law.
870. 01:09:37 I need to make this phone call.
871. 01:09:38 I need to let these people know I need to get the truck packed.
872. 01:09:40 I need to get like, there's just a lot of these things that I will probably not forget.
873. 01:09:46 But I know that in that situation, things are very urgent and quite important to use that
874. 01:09:52 matrix.
875. 01:09:54 I'm likely going to be distressed a little bit, so I'm probably going to forget something
876. 01:09:58 if I don't have it in list form.
877. 01:10:01 So that said, I have a baby time checklist that I've been adding to and tweaking over
878. 01:10:07 time as I know things that need to change for that.
879. 01:10:10 It's a one time checklist, but I know that it'll be helpful whenever I get there.
880. 01:10:14 So by the time we record again, Mike, I can let you know how that went.
881. 01:10:18 There you go.
882. 01:10:19 Nice.
883. 01:10:20 Sounds awesome.
884. 01:10:21 All right.
885. 01:10:23 So author style and rating?
886. 01:10:25 Yes.
887. 01:10:26 You want me to go first?
888. 01:10:28 Sure.
889. 01:10:29 Okay.
890. 01:10:31 I really enjoyed the book.
891. 01:10:33 I did find some of the medical description.
892. 01:10:36 Sometimes you do some terms that I just kind of felt like during the headlights was over
893. 01:10:41 my head, didn't really know exactly what was going on.
894. 01:10:45 I don't think that's really the way he intended it.
895. 01:10:47 Most of it was pretty approachable.
896. 01:10:49 He's not trying to sound smart, so to speak.
897. 01:10:54 And a lot of the stories that he shared were really powerful.
898. 01:10:57 There was just a couple of points where I was just like, I don't know what you just
899. 01:11:01 set.
900. 01:11:03 So it's a pretty short read though.
901. 01:11:06 And for the most part, it was very engaging.
902. 01:11:09 I really got a lot out of it.
903. 01:11:11 So I'm going to rate it 4.5 stars.
904. 01:11:14 Awesome.
905. 01:11:15 I can't say that I had issues in any scenario, not understanding.
906. 01:11:19 I don't know if that was just because I've read a lot of scientific journals.
907. 01:11:24 I think there's a lot of terms that I understand.
908. 01:11:27 I probably don't use them when I'm speaking.
909. 01:11:30 At least I kind of hope I don't.
910. 01:11:32 But I at least understand them.
911. 01:11:33 I don't know why that is.
912. 01:11:34 I'm just weird.
913. 01:11:35 See?
914. 01:11:36 I'm weird.
915. 01:11:37 I'm telling you, Mike.
916. 01:11:38 So I didn't have that issue, but I did find a lot of his stories very interesting.
917. 01:11:41 I've used a lot of different terms in this show, like gripping, intriguing, fascinating.
918. 01:11:46 So I did really appreciate his style.
919. 01:11:48 It was very engaging, as we've said.
920. 01:11:52 And it's one that I genuinely had a hard time putting down in some scenarios.
921. 01:11:57 I think I read it in three days, which is something, especially for me.
922. 01:12:02 But I did really enjoy it.
923. 01:12:04 And there was a lot of it that I really resonated with and enjoyed.
924. 01:12:08 So I highly recommend it.
925. 01:12:09 And for me, this is one that I know could be extremely helpful to pretty much anybody.
926. 01:12:16 This is one that I have already recommended to a few people who are new to lists, I guess.
927. 01:12:23 With my IT role, I know that there's a lot of folks that are on that staff that could
928. 01:12:29 benefit from this.
929. 01:12:31 I've been telling them to wait for this show to come out and then come listen to it.
930. 01:12:34 So they're going to know that I'm talking about them.
931. 01:12:36 That's fine.
932. 01:12:37 But I have recommended it to him already.
933. 01:12:39 And I know that there's a lot of power in what he says here.
934. 01:12:42 And it could easily be something that prompts people to get into this.
935. 01:12:46 And I know that that could be very helpful to them.
936. 01:12:49 So for me, I'm reading this a five, one of the rare fives I'll give.
937. 01:12:54 Just because I know that this is well written, I had zero qualms with how it was written.
938. 01:13:00 He covered a lot and showed a lot of examples, which really shows the strength of using a
939. 01:13:05 checklist.
940. 01:13:07 So I think this is something that just about anybody could read and could get something
941. 01:13:11 out of.
942. 01:13:12 So I highly recommend this and I'll give it a five O.
943. 01:13:14 So I'm actually going to trump you on the rating for once Mike.
944. 01:13:16 I usually go right below you, it seems.
945. 01:13:19 I noticed that.
946. 01:13:21 I was looking through some of our previous episodes and realizing that I'm usually like
947. 01:13:24 a half point behind you every single time.
948. 01:13:26 I don't intend that.
949. 01:13:27 Because I always know what I'm going to rate it before we start, just so I'm not biased
950. 01:13:31 whenever I get there.
951. 01:13:33 But anyway, for what it's worth.
952. 01:13:37 So upcoming books, the next one up is my choice.
953. 01:13:40 QBQ, the question behind the question by John Miller.
954. 01:13:44 And you've heard me probably in the last episode or two mention that there's a series of books
955. 01:13:50 that Dave Ramsey, if you're familiar with him, that he recommends or requires his employees
956. 01:13:55 to read before they start.
957. 01:13:56 This is one of them.
958. 01:13:58 And I am probably, for my choices across the next three or four or five times, we'll be
959. 01:14:04 picking out those particular series of books to go through.
960. 01:14:07 Because I have been wanting to read those for quite some time and I figured I'd make
961. 01:14:10 you do it with me, Mike.
962. 01:14:12 Nice.
963. 01:14:14 One after that is going to be Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, which is a book about making
964. 01:14:20 better decisions.
965. 01:14:23 And this is probably not the most popular book that they've written.
966. 01:14:27 I think the one that a lot of people have maybe read in the productivity space is Switch.
967. 01:14:33 But it's the same guy.
968. 01:14:34 It's Chip and Dan Heath.
969. 01:14:35 So it's a couple of brothers.
970. 01:14:36 And I have started this one maybe a couple of years ago and then just fell off.
971. 01:14:44 But from what I remember of it, it's a very compelling read.
972. 01:14:47 And I'm excited to actually go through it, especially with everything that we're talking
973. 01:14:52 about right now, brain chains, the checklist manifesto.
974. 01:14:56 It seems to me like there's a lot of ideas and trains of thought in my head, at least
975. 01:15:01 the way that I think that have been started, that this book could kind of put the period
976. 01:15:08 on the end of the sentence, I guess.
977. 01:15:10 There you go.
978. 01:15:11 Now, something we didn't mention was that the checklist manifesto, if I'm correct here,
979. 01:15:18 it was a recommendation from one of our listeners.
980. 01:15:21 Is that true?
981. 01:15:22 I believe so.
982. 01:15:23 Yep.
983. 01:15:24 Yeah.
984. 01:15:25 So this is the second of the recommendations, actually in a row that we've gone through
985. 01:15:31 from listeners.
986. 01:15:32 So if you're listening and you've got one you want us to go through, you want to get
987. 01:15:36 our interesting and weird take on a book, you can make that recommendation out on our
988. 01:15:41 website, bookworm.fm.
989. 01:15:43 So if you go out there, there's a link to recommend a book or if you want to go directly
990. 01:15:47 to it, it's bookworm.fm/recommend.
991. 01:15:50 And you can send that recommendation in through that system.
992. 01:15:53 And if you want to see what else has been recommended, you can just go to the book list
993. 01:15:56 there as well.
994. 01:15:57 So same place, bookworm.fm.
995. 01:15:59 If you want to go direct, it's /list.
996. 01:16:02 And you can see what's been recommended, what we're planning to read and then what we've
997. 01:16:06 recently completed.
998. 01:16:08 So you can get through all of the books that we've been through out there.
999. 01:16:12 And if you want to help us out, you could go to iTunes and leave us a short review.
1000. 01:16:17 Tell us what you liked or didn't like about the show.
1001. 01:16:20 But leaving a review really helps other people find the show and we take the feedback very
1002. 01:16:26 seriously.
1003. 01:16:27 So if you have suggestions, things you want to see changed, then that would be the place
1004. 01:16:33 to do it.
1005. 01:16:34 So again, we appreciate you taking the time to listen to us.
1006. 01:16:37 And if you're reading along with us and you want to get in on the next one, the next one
1007. 01:16:40 up is QBQ, the question behind the question by John Miller.
1008. 01:16:44 We will go through that one next time.
1009. 01:16:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]