Checklists at All Levels

Be open to creating any kind of checklist as the urge strikes you. The possibilities are endless—from “Core Life Values” to “Things to Take Camping” to “Potential Holiday Gifts.” Making lists, ad hoc, as they occur to you, is one of the most powerful yet subtlest and simplest procedures that you can install in your life.

To spark your creative thinking, here’s a list of some of the topics of checklists I’ve seen and used over the years:

• Job Areas of Responsibility (key responsibility areas)
• Exercise Regimens (muscle resistance training programs)
• Travel Checklist (everything to take on or do before a trip)
• Weekly Review (everything to review and/or update on a weekly basis)
• Training Program Components (all the things to handle when putting on an event, front to back)
• Key Clients
• People to Stay in Touch With (all the people you might want to connect with in your network)
• Year-end Activities (all the actions for closing up for the time period)
• Personal Development (things to evaluate regularly to ensure personal balance and progress)
• Jokes

Get comfortable with checklists, both ad hoc and more permanent. Be ready to create and eliminate them as required. Make sure you have an easily accessed place to put a new list that’s also attractive and even fun to engage with—in a loose-leaf notebook or in a software application that is readily available. Appropriately used, checklists can be a tremendous asset in enhancing personal productivity and relieving mental pressure.

If in fact you have now captured everything that represents an open loop in your life and work, clarified and processed each one of those items in terms of what it means to you and what actions are required, and organized the results into an intact system that holds a current and complete overview—large and small—of all your present and “someday” projects, then you’re ready for the next step of implementation in the art of stress-free productivity: the reflection process.