A Life-Saving Checklist

Atul is a famous chap Kannu. He usually talks about very basic stuff that has very long term implications and benefits. I'm a firm believer in checklists and action logs. For example, I have a spreadsheet which I use to manage my life. Office life at least. At this moment, I've got about 450 items on it. A variety of projects and things I need to keep track to manage this multi billion dollar business that I run. It's impossible for me to remember everything. So 2-3 times a week, I go through the list and remember what I did and then chase or do things.  Everybody has different ways of working. I like lists. What that allows me to do, son, is to make sure that I use my time effectively and do everything that I want to do or not. 

It's a good trick to have son. You don't forget them and they remind you when you want them to. Why? Because if you don't manage your time and tasks, they become unmanageable and you waste time. You waste time reading about them or retrieving them or worse making bad decisions. Makes you effective and efficient. As you can see below, it's not enough to be smart and intelligent. You have to have the right infrastructure and tools as well son. 

Boring stuff son. But vital. Discipline means you don't waste time on trivial things and then you free up time to sit and watch the sunrise with your girl beside you :) 

Love

Baba

A Life-Saving Checklist
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
(via Instapaper)

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If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it.

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal. Now survival is commonplace, and a large part of the credit goes to the irreplaceable component of medicine known as intensive care.

It’s an opaque term. Specialists in the field prefer to call what they do “critical care,” but that doesn’t exactly clarify matters. The non-medical term “life support” gets us closer. Intensive-care units take artificial control of failing bodies. Typically, this involves a panoply of technology—a mechanical ventilator and perhaps a tracheostomy tube if the lungs have failed, an aortic balloon pump if the heart has given out, a dialysis machine if the kidneys don’t work. When you are unconscious and can’t eat, silicone tubing can be surgically inserted into the stomach or intestines for formula feeding. If the intestines are too damaged, solutions of amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose can be infused directly into the bloodstream.