How to use and acquire the habit of using a checklist in your daily life to improve your effectiveness achieving goals
Does it happen to you that you have an important task to accomplish, and you need to have in advance some preparations, things to get done before accomplishing your task? Has happened to you to forget about those necessary preconditions? Then maybe you will need to use a checklist to validate that you have everything you need before start.
I have been using checklists for a while, mainly in relation to my profession. For example, I am working currently on a project, as Project Manager and, every time the team is about to deliver a new product release to the customer, this is my checklist:
Review the promised list of features versus what was really possible to do.
Create a release document divided into these sections: Done, In Progress, Pending, Known issues.
Fill the correspondent sections.
Deploy the mobile app to an online platform.
Notify the customer about the new release, using the release notes.
We use Trello, so I go and update the cards and to-dos to match the current status of the app.
How I get to have this easy checklist for this specific activity? Because, frankly, before that, sometimes I forgot to update Trello for example (Alright I still forget from time to time one step) and this makes the customer upset.
In daily life works the same.
Let’s not confuse this with having to check a sticky note every time you need to accomplish something important. The goal is to acquire the habit of thinking in terms of the checklist, so you really think about what is needed
We are talking here about reaching goals. I have the goal this year of being very productive in the mornings, which is my preferred time for being productive. Here there is a snipped of my daily morning routine, which I converted into a checklist.
One glass of water.
10 minutes of warm-up workout and strengths
10 minutes of meditation
15 minutes of daily English study (currently seeing this series by The Free Dictionary)
Find in my Pocket app one article that I consider useful to be shared with my colleagues and mark it to be shared in other moment.
Share (at the moment) one of the articles previously market as interesting.
Write during 15 minutes (complete a non-finished article, create new titles, etc.)
Every morning, whenever is possible, I execute this routine, following this checklist, and this help me to move forward, each day a bit, my goals (learn English, train my focus, engage with followers through share content or produce it)
What is important also is to not convert your checklists in a robotic task that you execute all the time without deviate. Your checklist should evolve as you learn what works and what not and if it helps you to reach your goals.
Conclusions
A checklist is a useful tool that you can evolve and keep in your mind (or other support), to validate that everything is set up is one of the most useful and potent tools you can add to your skill-set. With the right set of items, it can help you to accomplish more, without applying too much effort.
