Did you know that checking boxes on a checklist can actually save lives? I read an interesting article in Fast Company called The Heroic Checklist. 

Fast food companies are notorious for using them to simplify things for their employees. But did you know that hospitals are also using them to save lives? In one hospital alone they were able to save about 1,500 lives simply because they developed a simple five-step checklist for inserting IV lines.

I’m very glad that the pilot who flew me home this weekend went through his checklist to make sure our airplane was ready for take-off. If using a checklist is helpful to these industries I’m wondering how I can use them in my organization.

What do you think about checklists? Would they help you? Or do you think they’re a waste of time?

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Mijn baas is een aanhanger van de Clean Desk Policy, waarbij je geen persoonlijke spullen op je bureau hebt staan zodat elk bureau een flexibele werkplaats wordt. Sinds vandaag vind ik dat enkele persoonlijke spullen, zoals een kalender bijvoorbeeld echter onontbeerlijk zijn.

Duval-Guillaume Antwerp blijft leuke varianten verzinnen van de better world ads; ik kan dat best wel begrijpen: ik kan saaiere onderwerpen bedenken om over te brainstormen.

For those who have just joined us here at Eden’s Path, a word of explanation. Four months ago Debbie and I decided we would turn off our cable TV. Disconnect it, and unhook from the world of 100-channels and nothing to watch. All for only $58 per month.

All we had was the “basic cable” service anyway. No digital TV, no set-top box, no 24-hour music channels — nothing but what the cable company said was basic service. Which is what we thought until early 2006, when I called to tell them we wanted to disconnect. “But,” the helpful lady said, “we have local channels for only $10 a month.” So, I fell for that and for several months we got about 12 channels — all the local stuff, plus 2 PBS stations, plus ESPN (not local, but go figure).

That lasted until the 2006 elections, and I wanted to watch the election returns, so I upgraded from “local” back to “basic.” We kept cable on until last summer, when we both agreed we were tired of nothing to watch at $58 per month.

So, I called the cable company again. “I want to disconnect my cable,” I courageously told the customer service person. “What if I offer you the same service for only $30 per month?” she asked kindly. Of course, I fell for it, again, but felt like a real negotiator this time. “I got our cable for only $30 a month,” I proudly told Debbie.

By this fall, both of us had decided cable was not even worth $30 a month. One more call.

• “I want to disconnect my cable,” I said.
• “How about just local channels for $15 a month?” she asked.
• “Nope.”
• “How about high speed internet? We have the fastest at only $49.95 a month.”
• “Thanks, but we’ve got DSL.”
• “We could offer you phone service, too”
• “No thanks. Just cut it off.”

And with that, we were disconnected from the world of cablevision. Umbilical cord cut. Free-floating in the digital age without a coax to our name. Here’s what we’ve discovered:

1. We didn’t have time to watch TV anyway because we’ve been busy reading, talking, playing Scrabble (don’t laugh, Debbie beats me), blogging, visiting folks, and baking bread.
2. We don’t miss it.
3. There isn’t much real news. What there is we get on the internet.
4. Others have done the same thing. I just discovered yesterday that Kevin Kelley, one of the founding editors of Wired magazine lives in a TV-less house.
5. We’re not going back.

So, that’s what really started us on this little journey. Oh, the roots go back further than that, I guess. We’ve had a 15-year on-again-off-again love affair with a vegan diet; now more on than off. We’re in a different stage in our lives, and I’ll write more about that later. But, it’s the quiet we love. We can hear the birds now, even with the windows closed. We can hear our neighbors children playing in their yard. We can hear each other. We think we can hear God sometimes, too. Still faintly, but better than before. All of that for $0 per month. Not a bad deal.