The humble checklist is one of the most powerful weapons in our productivity arsenal. Checklists are a very simple tool but used to enable people to manage incredibly complex processes without error across the globe every single day. And so – use checklists! They will make you more effective.
How does an airline team ensure that the aircraft is fit to fly before any passengers ever get on board? The use a checklist. How does a pilot ensure the plane is ready for takeoff before he lifts potentially hundreds of souls into the sky in a steel tube? He uses a checklist. How does a surgeon ensure that a complicated procedure will not suffer from infection or mishap? They use a checklist.
Checklists are powerful because they break a complicated process down into small steps. Checklists are powerful as we can easily see the progress of completing each one of those steps as we run through the process. Checklists are powerful as they ensure that we do not miss out on a crucial step along the way.
So, that’s the tip for today. Use checklists!
I use checklists for all of my planning. Be it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual – I have a simple checklist for each that I run through.
In a former life as a Church Manager, I had two checklists that I ran through, one on a Monday and one on a Friday to try and ensure that everybody in the church, the staff and leadership, was fully informed of everything that they might need to know.
If you are going away anywhere for any length of time, especially with children, having a simple checklist that walks you through the process of organising the trip and packing for the trip saves hours of mental exertion figuring out every single time.
If you are preparing Bible studies or sermons, whilst flexibility should be allowed, a simple checklist to walk you through the process of studying the bible and moving from the text to the sermon can be a really useful tool to prevent you getting ahead of yourself.
Whatever your work, or whatever you need to organise in life, there will be a few simple checklists that can help you work through whatever processes you need to in get stuff done.
Checklists help by reducing the amount of time required to think about what you are doing and by reducing the likelihood that you will miss something.
So, use checklists – a simple tool, but a powerful one.
If you like to read more on this then I highly recommend The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande — https://amzn.to/3XB3eM9.
If there are checklists that you use in every day life, why let us know in the comments below. I’m sure that someone else reading this will benefit greatly from a few more ideas in this area.
This is so true and helpful even for more menial tasks like food shopping