30 Days to a More Organized Life, Day 22: Make Checklists
If there is any task that you perform over and over – no matter how simple – you can benefit by making a checklist for it.
Think you’re too good for a checklist? Think you can remember everything? Then consider this article showing how doctors often neglect to follow simple steps in basic procedures. A single hospital added a checklist to the doctors’ routine and it prevented eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs during the trial.
But, doctors aren’t the only ones. Professional airline pilots fly hundreds of times in a career. No matter how often they’ve done it, they still use a checklist to get that plane off the ground.
If doctors and pilots use checklists, so should you.
Think about the tasks or jobs you do repeatedly – any of these are good candidates for checklists.
Some of my own checklists include: performing my weekly review, setting up meetings with time management clients, putting up blog posts, monthly finance meetings with my wife, spring cleaning, and packing for trips.
When you make your checklists, keep them as files on your computer. Then, when the action comes up, you can print out the checklist and get the satisfaction of crossing off the steps one-by-one.
If you have any suggestions of things that you use checklists for, please leave a comment below.
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