Checklists are a great tool for productivity. They can save a lot of time and prevent mistakes, rethinking, and missing steps. Yet many people don’t use them. Here are 5 reasons to get checklists into your productivity system today.
1. You don’t have to re-think something.
Why expend effort you don’t need to? By creating a reusable checklist, you won’t have to figure out all the steps to complete something you don’t do very often. Example: our weather is such that it is easy to forget to prepare the house and yard for winter.
By having a checklist, we can make sure we get all the water hoses drained and the faucets turned off — even if they are covered by landscaping that removes the possibility of a visual reminder. And that means we will never have a repeat of the flooded side yard after the hose burst and ran for a week.
2. You don’t have to waste time and energy remembering.
Checklists show their power when you use them to prompt your for things you don’t often do. Example: by creating a checklist of pre-vacation items, I remember to do things like turn down the water heater, stop the mail, and bolt the garage.
This means that I will never have to try and figure out how to electronically pay the cat sitter while on vacation, because the checklist includes leaving a check.
3. You can hand a task off to someone easily.
Since the thinking has already been done and the steps listed out, you can hand the task off to someone else and be reasonably assured of the outcome. Example: my daughter, as a toddler, thrived on routine. When my husband was in the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, a friend, with the help of a checklist of evening activities, was able to feed her dinner and get her ready for bed — with no deviations from the normal schedule that would have caused a meltdown.
4. You can tell at a glance where you are in the process.
Checklists aren’t just for short term things. If you have something that will take place over a week or more, you can use your checklist to remind you of what step you are on. Example: Refinishing furniture requires multiple steps, and requires time between steps as well as the right weather to complete successfully. When we refinished our bedroom furniture (several pieces), we used checklists to determine which coat of finish needed to be applied when the weather cooperated.
I also use a checklist to help me manage multi-day software deployments at work – glancing at the list, I know exactly where I am in the process when I am asked for an update.
5. You can keep track of several similar concurrent tasks easily.
Example: My husband’s entire family has birthdays in March. By having a checklist for each person, I can figure out if I need to buy a card or gift, or if I have mailed everything, or if I’m waiting for something to be shipped.
I also used this for planning out Girl Scout meetings: one checklist per meeting, and I could determine where everything was as far as permissions and planning.
Checklists are a staple of my life. I use them to help keep me on track, and keep track of what is going on. If you don’t use checklists, or if you do, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
If you are interested in making printable checklists, I have used Canva. It’s really easy to get the layout – and they walk you through the entire process.
