Tag Archives: Todo

This is a continuation of a thread of posts (part 1, part 2).

3.  Put the whole project on a list and off your mind, or don’t use one at all.

Computers are simple creations.  Despite dramatic advances in artificial intelligence – and the ensuing debate on what constitutes “intelligence” – our multi-core, multi-gigahertz processing machines touting terabytes of storage can’t make a decision that it wasn’t programmed to do.  Continue reading →

This post is part of a series (part 1 | part 2 | part 3)

2. if something needs to be done at a certain time, make it a calendar event, not a TODO ITEM.

Computer are actually incapable of recognizing time. When you tell the computer to “wait 1 second,” it actually converts 1 second to the number of CPU cycles to wait before executing your code.  This means that if another program suddenly tries to execute high priority code right before your timer is up, the CPU will go run their code and leave your program hanging to dry.   Continue reading →

This prolific (and also very nice) guy wrote extensively about the importance of checklists in medicine, and how we need more of them. If you work in healthcare and are now accustomed to doing “timeouts” you have this man to thank.  Some people say checklists make medicine sound like a cookbook, making doctors work like computer software following instructions.   Continue reading →