checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive ne… - Atul Gawande

checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.

Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything — a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps — the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.

And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.

It is not death that the very old tell me they fear. It is what happens short of death — losing their hearing, their memory, their best friends, their way of life. As Felix put it to me, “Old age is a continuous series of losses.” Philip Roth put it more bitterly in his novel Everyman: “Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.