Recommended Reading: Better

What profession demands perfection every time? In what profession are they not only finding ways to do what they do better, but finding better ways to do what they do? Where is one mistake a potentially huge deal?

Well, turns out I'm very intentionally being vague enough to describe both surgery and refereeing.

Atul Gawande's book Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance was a great read, full of conversations about how one deals with stress, how one deals with failure, and how one pushes oneself to be better when others won't. He's talking about as a surgeon, I think there's a lot to learn about refereeing or, as is probably his point, about life in general. But focus on being a better ref, I don't care if you're a better person.