A Checklist for Making Checklists
From bestselling author Greg McKeown
We all have tasks we do repeatedly. In our personal lives, we prepare meals, clean our homes, and pack for trips. In our professional lives, we have have regular rounds (safety checks, supervisor check-ins, etc) and repeat deliverables (reports, designs, presentations, videos, articles, etc).
For any recurring task, it can be helpful to create a checklist for it.
Referring to a good checklist can make your performance of recurring tasks easier, smoother, more efficient, more thorough, and more consistent.
Written words don’t forget, but you do. A checklist can remind you of every step in the process of your task, as well as the ideal sequence of those steps. Repeatedly following the same ideal sequence of steps will facilitate memorization and habit formation, both of which will make the task more automatic and less difficult.
Greg McKeown, author of the widely acclaimed book Essentialism, offers the following checklist for making checklists:
Observe your process
Record your process
Refine your process
In other words, the next time you perform a recurring taks: watch what you do, write what you did, and then edit what you wrote to improve your procedure.
To refine, look for opportunities for improvement as you field-test your checklist:
Are there any steps to add that would improve performance?
Are there any redundant or otherwise unnecessary steps to remove to make the task simpler, smoother, easier, faster, and more efficient?
Do you find yourself skipping over particular items? If so, those probably need to be revised or removed.
Can any of the steps be resequenced for greater efficiency (i.e., to reduce fumbling around, retracing your steps, excessive screen-switching, etc.)
Is there a better method for doing any of the steps (i.e., using a different app function or a different app entirely)
I can personally attest to the effectiveness of these methods. I used them to develop several checklists that have proven to be very helpful, including one I use every day to write and publish Substack posts like this one.
The more you use and perfect your checklists, the more you will regularize and perfect your processes. And the more you do that, the smoother and better your life will be.
As Jordan B. Peterson wrote:
“Life is what repeats, and it is worth getting what repeats right.”
P.S. For more checklist tips, I recommend the two videos below. The first one features Greg McKeown and presents his checklist for checklists. (NB, regarding the second video: if you create a checklist in the Apple Notes app, there’s no need to uncheck every item individually to reset it like Matt D’Avella does. Just select the whole list and toggle the checklist formatting off and then on again to reset.)