Tiny boxes, huge consequences: How checklists have saved lives, hours, and experiments
In Episode 6, Alex and Moah trace the origin and history of a simple productivity tool that transformed aviation safety, helped land humans on the Moon, slashed surgical fatalities by 47 percent, and saved their own product launches at Boomerang from chaos. You’ll hear about the 1935 B‑17 disaster that birthed the first checklist for Boeing, the Checklist Manifesto research that turned skeptics into believers, and the sly NSFW surprise Apollo 12 astronauts found on their cuff checklists — one they had to hide from the public. Along the way, they unpack two types of checklists: read-do vs. do‑confirm and explain when and how you should use each. They will also share three properties that make every checklist more usable and which kind of errors checklists prevent (it’s not errors of ignorance). Whether you ship code, host events, or just want to stop leaving analytics off your product experiments, this episode will get you a head start on using checklists the right way. Tune in to learn how a simple 19‑item checklist can save you up to 19 hours of rework. Links from the Show! Surgical safety https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/checklist-for-surgical-safety B17 to Apollo Missions: https://blog.nuclino.com/the-simple-genius-of-checklists-from-b-17-to-the-apollo-missions The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande https://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/ Playboy Playmates on the moon: https://aphelis.net/seen-any-interesting-hills-valley-playmates-on-the-moon-1969/ Checklist Usage Paper: https://aircconline.com/csit/papers/vol11/csit112322.pdf Picture of Neil Armstrong’s cuff checklist from Apollo 11 https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-media/NASM-SI-2006-11306 Van Halen and Bowl of Brown M&Ms https://www.acadia-software.com/landing-pages/checklists-standardwork/ Tools Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com Got todos? Get GQueues gqueues.com
