CONCEPT
Better Is Not Best
Gawande's orientation toward improvement as an unending comparative rather than a terminal state — committing the practitioner to measurable incremental gains without demanding the unattainable perfection that either paralyzes practice or licenses denial.
Gawande titled his second book with a single comparative adjective, and the choice was an argument. Not best. Not optimal. Not perfect. Better. The word captured an orientation toward improvement that Gawande considered the defining characteristic of excellent practice — not the achievement of a final state but the sustained pursuit of incremental gains, each one small, each one measurable, each one compounding over time. The word also carried a quiet admission that perfection was impossible in any domain practiced by fallible humans under conditions of irreducible uncertainty. Surgery will produce complications. The complication rate can be reduced. It cannot be eliminated. The aspiration to eliminate it produces either paralysis or denial.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Gawande identified three requirements for the discipline of becoming better, each illuminating a specific dimension of the AI-assisted building challenge. Diligence: the commitment to applying known best practices consistently, even when application is tedious and apparently unnecessary