A reminder on a phone vanishes with one swipe. A slip of paper in your hand has to be finished by someone.
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How is it different from a notification?
NOTIFICATION
A ding, and a banner pops up
Dozens a day, until your brain learns to swipe them away without looking
PRINTED SLIP
A small slip comes out and sits right where the work happens
It takes up space and gets in your way, and you can only throw it out once it's ticked off
In plain words: a notification "tells you", a slip of paper "hands it to you".
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Hospitals have already tested "swiping it away"
When a doctor prescribes a drug, the hospital computer pops up a warning: "these two drugs shouldn't be taken together". Sounds useful, right?
49% to 96%
of warnings were simply dismissed with "ignore" by the doctor
Dutch researchers pooled 17 studies (2006)
It isn't that doctors don't care. There are so many warnings, and most don't matter, so people build a reflex: see it, click it away.
It has a name: "alert fatigue". Cry wolf too often and nobody reacts when the real wolf shows up.
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One sheet of paper saved a lot of people
The World Health Organization did something very simple: before surgery, the team takes a one-page checklist and reads it out loud and ticks every line: who the patient is, which side to operate on, whether the instrument count is right.
8 countries, 8 hospitals, nearly 7,700 patients
1.5%Deaths after surgery before the checklist
0.8%Deaths after surgery with the checklist
11%Before complications
7%After complications
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2009)
No new machine, no new drug. What worked: put it in front of people, read it out, tick it off line by line.
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In a small shop, it works like this
① The computer does the thinkingWhat to buy, what to do, who does it
② A small slip comes outThe same paper as a supermarket receipt, a cent or two a slip
③ People read it and tick it offReading the slip aloud in the morning beats an hour-long meeting
④ Numbered, so it can be checked laterWhat was printed on which day and whether it was done: one flip and you know
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Slips the shop really prints
Tomorrow's shopping listSorted by supplier, one slip each
Today's specialThe first thing guests see at the door
Recipe prep slipSo many grams of tomato, so many grams of sugar to match
Next day's task slipsOne per person, with their own jobs on it
Come-back couponNumbered, void once used
Ingredient date labelWhen it was made, visible at a glance
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One thing it must not do
Don't print everythingPrint too much and the slips become a pile nobody reads, the same story as those dismissed hospital warnings. Only print what "someone must do today", and the slip keeps its weight.
"Isn't this a step back to paper?"
Leave the thinking to the computer, the doing to people. The paper is the hand-off between them.
Those 99+ unread notifications on your phone are the answer.
