better
Friday, June 1st, 2007
A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance.
Always try to do better. For those in the medical profession, better can mean the difference between life and death. But it can be a guiding principle in all life pursuits.
Atul Gawande makes some suggestions at the end:
1) Ask an unscripted question. Something that establishes a personal connection between yourself and other(s). Without that personal connection, it is too easy to treat people as objects.
2) Don’t complain. “It’s boring, it doesn’t solve anything, and it will get you down.”
3) Count something. Measure something about the universe in which you live and breathe. When you have counted, you can measure and analyze trends.
4) Write something. It is an attempt to observe and document, or observe and remember, something special about your world.
5) Change. Look to be better.
In a universe dominated by the bell curve, it is the “positive deviants” who pull the average in a direction that is beneficial to the rest, by becomine one of those deviations.