How to make the most of your Checklists

A few days back I posted this post about the power of checklists and promised that the next day I would post about how to make the most of your checklists.  I didn’t as I got carried away with some other ideas.  But today, we return to checklists.  Checklists ARE powerful tools but only if we actually harness that power.  So today, I give you a few tips on how to make the most of your checklists.

Why do you need a checklist?

Firstly, you need to work out what the checklist is for.  The way I look at this, every checklist will serve some combination of 3 purposes.

1. To help you get the hang of a process you need to follow in the short term.  An example here would be the checklist I created for processing each and every email in my inbox.
2. To serve as a base for you to amend each time you use it to meet the current need.  An example here would be a packing list as every trip will have different needs, but having a base list is really helpful.
3. To make 100% certain that when following a complex process, you do not miss anything.  The most well known examples of this would be the lists that Aviation Engineers and Pilots go through to make sure everything is good to go before take off.

Checklists that you create for each of these occasions are very powerful but the best ways to harness that power will be different.

But they all have one thing in common.  If you are going to make the most of your checklists….then you need to actually USE the list.  Don’t create one and then decide you don’t have the time or patience to actually run through it, item by item, to actually follow it.  If you do that, then the checklist is a waste of time and you will miss things and make mistakes.

Making the most of your checklists – Type 1

These are created for the short term.  Maybe there is an area of life that you are not managing all that well.  The small stuff.  Routinely find yourself forgetting you laptop cable?  Often miss things in emails that you receive?  Need to give focus to changing how you start and end the day?  A checklist is your friend here.  The power in this type of checklist lies in its creation.  It is powerful, because you take time to actually think about what you want to do, what you need to have and any process that you want to follow.  You consider this, and make decisions on it, separately from the moment its needed.  

The purpose of this type of checklist is to help you form a habit.

As such, they are normally shorter and deal with more mundane and less critical things.  The way to make the most of them is to create them in the first place, follow them until it becomes more habitual and then you need not use them any longer.  But keep them, in case you need it again.

Making the most of your checklists – Type 2

These types of checklists are effectively like templates that you will amend each and every time you use them based on the situation.  For me, this is packing lists and my project planning checklist.  I also used to use this for my shopping lists.  The basic idea is to consider in advance every category or area you need to think about.  For shopping this could be like the aisles of the store.  For packing you could have things like clothes, toiletries, entertainment and tech.

There are three things you need to do to make the most of these checklists:

1. Try to make them as comprehensive as possible so when you come to use them, you have as much to work with as possible.
2. Make your own judgement on whether or not you need to make multiple lists to prevent a comprehensive list being too unwieldy and long.  For example, in packing I used to have a couple of different lists depending on whether or not I was going to stay with family or going on holiday in a hotel or something.  If I was with family, there would be plenty of things that I didn’t need to think about.
3. Each time you use the list, review and add or subtract things based on the specific occasion.  The packing list would be adjusted and so would look different if I was headed to the south of Italy than it would if I was headed to Scotland – where I am told “it never rains”.

Making the most of your checklists – Type 3

This type will normally be the longest and the most involved.  With this type, the reason you are creating the checklist in the first place is to make ABSOLUTELY certain that certain, specific, things are carefully checked.  With this type, it is absolutely essential that you progress through the list, one item at a time and check things off as you go.  This is to be sure that things get done in the first place and also so that when looking back over the list you can quickly see what has been done and what still needs to be done.

You might be tempted to just do it in your head.  This is a mistake as we have all done it and ended up asking the question – “Haven’t I done this one already?  I think I have…I remember doing it…but was that today or was that last week?  I can’t remember…”  So yes, start with blank checklists, every time and then, every time actually go through it and check things off as you do them.

This type of checklist will also benefit from regular review and update based on what has gone well and what has not gone well when you have employed it.

So, how to make the most of your checklists – in summary:

1. Create the checklists
2. Know the purpose of the checklist
3. Use and follow the checklist
4. Keep the checklist up to date.

If you would like to read more on this then I highly recommend The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande — https://amzn.to/3XB3eM9. (Affiliate Link)

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E|F Muses on....

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