Quality and effort - Seth’s Blog

I always find Seth’s posts insightful. And he posts so many of them, and they’re so concise… that basically he’s a walking example of why writing and publishing every day is the only way to get great at being a writer and a publisher.

This post captures so well why “just try harder not to make mistakes” is a dead end that I just want to quote all of it, but since that’s not really how I want the web to work, just a couple highlights before you go read the rest (it’s only 416 words):

It seems ridiculous that a surgeon needs to write her name (with a Sharpie) on the limb that she’s about to operate on, but this simple system adjustment means that errors involving working on the wrong limb will go to zero.

In school, we harangue kids to be more careful, and spend approximately zero time teaching them to build better systems instead. We ignore checklists and processes because we’ve been taught that they’re beneath us.

The ego that makes us think we’re “above” simple systems for eliminating mistakes is as hardwired a part of our humanity as the imperfect memory.

Letting go of the one lets us solve for the other.