The Best of Optimize Series Follow Along!

Try 14 Days Free

Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande

Surgeon, writer, and public health researcher.

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is also Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally.

PhilosophersNotes on Atul Gawande's Books All PhilosophersNotes

The Checklist Manifesto

How to Get Things Right

by Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande is a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He’s also an extraordinary, best-selling author of a number of books. Short story: Want to get things right? Use a checklist. Sounds too silly to work but… It does. Period. Big Ideas we explore include two reasons we err (ignorance + ineptitude), what to do about it (checklists!), how to reduce your Masterpiece Day mortality rate by at least 47% (checklists!), why Van Halen doesn’t like brown M&M’s (checklists!), and your Big 3 Keystone Initiative (checklist!).

Packs:

Algorithms & Habits & Peak Performance

Discipline Fundamentals Habits productivity Top 101

+1s Inspired by Atul Gawande All +1s

De Minimis Non Curat Optimizers
#257

Let’s Not Concern Ourselves with Trifles

As I’ve shared before, I dropped out of law school before finishing my first semester of contract law (go Boalt Hall class of 2000!). Although I’m thrilled I didn’t pursue law as my profession, I love some of the Big Ideas we can mine from the domain. We’ve talked about the fact that go...

+1 inspired by Note: The Checklist Manifesto

Packs:

Antifragility & Conquering Perfectionism

antifragility conquering-perfectionism Discipline Happiness self-awareness Work

Why We Err
#323

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

Necessary Fallibility + Ignorance + Ineptitude

In our last +1, we reflected on Nobel Prize-winning Herbert Simon’s wisdom that “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” I mentioned the fact that it’s easy to read that and say, “Yah! So true…” and then do nothing about it — continuing to shred our att...

+1 inspired by Note: The Checklist Manifesto

Packs:

Optimal Living & Peak Performance

Growth Practice self-awareness Wisdom Work

Masterpiece Day Checklist
#324

Get instant access to all +1's!

Join nearly 10,000 members in the
1,000-Day Epic Optimizing Challenge
and start optimizing your life today.

Join Now

How to Reduce Masterpiece Day Mortality Rates by 47%

In our last +1 we talked about the three reasons why we err: necessary fallibility (we’re not omniscient and some things are outside of our human capacity; therefore, we err), ignorance (we may not kno...

+1 inspired by Note: The Checklist Manifesto

Packs:

Masterpiece Days & Productivity

Discipline productivity Systems time management Work