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Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

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Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#61

Post by totoglazer »

seanwilson wrote: post #59
larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I've seen solo technical authors trying to sell concise ~100 page books and you often see comments like "that's too expensive, you can read it in a few hours and ebooks don't cost anything to produce!", ignorin…

Marie Kondo and the magic of tidying up. It’s padded, but even with padding basically magazine article length.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#62

Post by seanwilson »

zrail wrote: post #60
seanwilson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I've seen solo technical authors trying to sell concise ~100 page books and you often see comments like "that's too expensive, you can read it in a few hours and ebooks don't cost anything to produce!", ignorin…

Depends on what you mean by "money". My book Mastering Modern Payments made ~$80k in its useful lifetime and it was about 100 pages.

That's awesome, can I ask what did you do for marketing before launch and after?

So I know Refactoring UI did ridiculously well (https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1289702466754211842) for example while being concise.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#63

Post by vira28 »

mikestew wrote: post #15
larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

Welcome to the genre of self-help books. I can't recall the last one I read that couldn't have just as easily been a long essay. "Here's a few good points and ideas, surrounded by a fuck-ton of anecdotes and proverbs, because you're not going to pay $20 for a magazine article."

Have you read the book “Give and Take”?

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#64

Post by lukestevens »

vincentmarle wrote: post #2

> Making a good human-usable checklist takes a lot of workshopping. Airlines are still constantly revising their 200-page manual of individually optimized checklists for every possible emergency, as plane designs change and new safety data rolls in. When I first read the book a couple years ago, and introduced checklists into my team, I found that there was no great tool to manage and create checklists and share it w…

Process Street, maybe? (https://www.process.st)

“Process Street is a simple, free and powerful way to manage your team's recurring checklists and procedures.” No affiliation, just interested in the same problem.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#65

Post by RheingoldRiver »

zomglings wrote: post #57
vincentmarle wrote: post #2

> Making a good human-usable checklist takes a lot of workshopping. Airlines are still constantly revising their 200-page manual of individually optimized checklists for every possible emergency, as plane designs change and new safety data rolls in. When I first read the book a couple years ago, and introduced checklists into my team, I found that there was no great tool to manage and create checklists and share it w…

Google Docs has introduced checklists alongside unordered and ordered lists. The keyboard shortcut to start a checklist is CTRL + SHIFT + 9. Blew my mind when a friend told me about this. Edit: Also, for software teams, GitHub supports checklists on their issues/PRs. My team has written a bot which blocks PRs until all checks are checked off. It's been pretty fantastic.

The markdown in github is damned annoying, though, it's whitespace-sensitive in THREE separate places (after the dash, between the brackets, after the brackets) - and then when you are saying "I did this" you have to add the x and delete the space between the brackets. I realize it sounds nitpicky but if you're really using checklists for everything then micro UX like this matters.

(I'm sort of hoping someone corrects me on this point & I find out a better way to use it because I do love the functionality, in theory, I just find myself never bothering to check off anything is completed.)

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#66

Post by [deleted] »

vira28 wrote: post #63
mikestew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the genre of self-help books. I can't recall the last one I read that couldn't have just as easily been a long essay. "Here's a few good points and ideas, surrounded by a fuck-ton of anecdotes and proverbs, because you're not going to pay $20 for a magazine article."

Have you read the book “Give and Take”?

[deleted]

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#67

Post by znpy »

mikestew wrote: post #15
larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

Welcome to the genre of self-help books. I can't recall the last one I read that couldn't have just as easily been a long essay. "Here's a few good points and ideas, surrounded by a fuck-ton of anecdotes and proverbs, because you're not going to pay $20 for a magazine article."

I'm so so immensely relieved to learn I'm not the only one feeling this things.

Happened with all the self-help or self-improvement books I've touched.

The most excessive example of this being "getting things done" which was very trendy about ten years ago: the first third of the book were literally about the author bragging about results (but without any way to fact-check).

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#68

Post by lmm »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #65
zomglings wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs has introduced checklists alongside unordered and ordered lists. The keyboard shortcut to start a checklist is CTRL + SHIFT + 9. Blew my mind when a friend told me about this. Edit: Also, for software teams, GitHub supports checklists on their issues/PRs. My team has written a bot which blocks PRs until all checks are checked off. It's been pretty fantastic.

The markdown in github is damned annoying, though, it's whitespace-sensitive in THREE separate places (after the dash, between the brackets, after the brackets) - and then when you are saying "I did this" you have to add the x and delete the space between the brackets. I realize it sounds nitpicky but if you're really using checklists for everything then micro UX like this matters. (I'm sort of hoping someone correct…

I think it's meant to be used from the web UI where you just click the box rather than replacing the space between the square brackets with an x.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#69

Post by sundarurfriend »

vincentmarle wrote: post #2

> Making a good human-usable checklist takes a lot of workshopping. Airlines are still constantly revising their 200-page manual of individually optimized checklists for every possible emergency, as plane designs change and new safety data rolls in. When I first read the book a couple years ago, and introduced checklists into my team, I found that there was no great tool to manage and create checklists and share it w…

I came across this: https://columns.app/ some time ago. Neat attractive design, and a bunch of interesting features.

Re: Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

#70

Post by ajmurmann »

mikestew wrote: post #15
larrywright wrote: post #4

I liked this book, but it’s a prime example of an article or blog post that gets turned into a book by adding a bunch of things that don’t really provide more useful information, but seem to serve as filler to make it book-length. I read the book, and I read the article that the book was based on. I don’t recall learning anything from the book that I hadn’t already learned from the article.

Welcome to the genre of self-help books. I can't recall the last one I read that couldn't have just as easily been a long essay. "Here's a few good points and ideas, surrounded by a fuck-ton of anecdotes and proverbs, because you're not going to pay $20 for a magazine article."

Last year I heard someone call out the value in your mind being exposed to a topic for a length of time. I've found this to be true. I recently reread The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and forming my own mental model and brushing it against what three book had to say gave me more value than just absorbing the book's content.
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