30 pages • 1 hour read
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
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AfterwordChapter Summaries & Analyses
Afterword Summary: “Suggestions for Becoming a Positive Deviant”
In the Afterword, Gawande challenges his reader to answer the question, “How do I really matter?” (250). He offers five basic principles to use to answer this question. First, ask an unscripted question, one that creates “a human connection” (251). Second, don’t complain. Third, count something. For Gawande, “counting something” means being “a scientist in this world” (254), always striving to find a new answer to a problem or a connection to something previously unseen. Fourth, write something. This allows an individual to become “part of a larger world” (256). Fifth, change. For Gawande, embracing change is the catalyst that enables everyone to be better.
Afterword Analysis
Gawande uses the Afterword to offer practical advice about how everyone, including doctors, can become better. While the rest of the book dispenses this advice in more general terms, the Afterword gives readers detailed and simple instructions to follow. It shows them what they can do on a daily basis to take control of their lives and become better people. By demonstrating how little actions can have a larger impact on one’s life, Gawande helps readers set the groundwork for improving their futures. As a result, he helps readers view the task of living a better life not as unsurmountable but as a something that can be accomplished one step at a time.
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By Atul Gawande
