Jian cha biao

One big idea: make simple checklists for important, but easy to forget processes. It'll reduce your errors, and free up your brain to think about the harder parts of the problems you're solving.

I'd have rated it higher if there were more guidance on how much is "enough" in writing a good checklist, or if it were even shorter. Gawande goes back and forth between medicine and aviation in his examples, and he could perhaps consolidate the narratives a bit better.

He ends up this book with the strongest examples of checklists conquering complex systems - the "miracle on the Hudson" landing of an Airbus a couple of years back and superior investment picking systems whose main defense against bad decisions is the attention to detail enforced by the checklist. If we ever land people on Mars or build an undersea habitat it will probably be by means of some checklist encompassing a project too big for one person to hold within a single mind.