Four Most Important Evidence Checklists Are Useful Not Only at Work

Checklists are the essence of practical knowledge on almost every topic. They facilitate management, recruitment or sales and increase personal efficiency. Additionally, they simplify reality to a binary form. They do not hesitate and there is no place for suppositions. What else do we appreciate checklists for? Just read on!

For people who tend to procrastinate, they’re the best tool to get down to business.

An old motto says that one person may eat a roast the size of an elephant, and it is only a matter of the number of slices. The best scenario is when they are small and at least slightly differ from each other. That’s the way checklists work. Like a human body image in a CT machine, the image of a project, renovation, travel, move or another great challenge is divided into small “slices”. The simpler each point is, the better. Ready? It doesn’t look that scary anymore, does it? And all you have to do then, is to tick them off one by one. Sounds simple? Because it should!

You may also be interested in: Three Reliable Ways to Manage Procrastination

For those who are overwhelmed and… sleepy, they are a warranty that they will perform at least most of the tasks planned for a day.

If your morning starts with stomach cramps due to the excess of repetitive tasks, make friends with checklists. Making them takes some time, but you will gain reusable tools. Of course, just writing down the things to do is not enough. What is truly important, is to write down HOW a given thing should be done and then turn individual activities into points. Remember that every subsequent use of the checklist should bring something new to it. In the IT industry, those product improvement stages are called iterations, and they are responsible for creating epochal solutions, for instance the browser that helps you read these words.

They are the simplest form of transferring practical skills.

It does sounds scary, but it’s all about teaching someone to perform new tasks efficiently and quickly. The checklist, i.e. simplifying a dozen, several dozen or several hundred activities into an doable form, is the best onboarding tool. Even if a new person in the company is left alone with unfamiliar tasks for a while, they will be able to show some initiative with the help of a checklist. It is worth to know that some companies use this tactic on purpose during each new employee’s onboarding in order to assess how valuable for the company in the future they can be. New roommates, contrary to popular belief, also appreciate checklists.

Read also: Seven Rules That Will Help You Work More Efficiently

They allow for substantive disciplinary discussions.

Whether it’s about pickling cucumbers or testing safety systems – we simply can’t omit certain stages, because the results can be… troublesome. Unnecessary emotions appear easily, and conversations can be difficult, both for bosses and employees. Fortunately, checklists also come in handy in this case. A project hasn’t been submitted on time? It’s a good idea to discuss the circumstances immediately with a checklist at hand and find out the reasons behind this situation. Then all you need to do is to make sure that the effects are commonly known, and at the same time make yourself aware of the consequences related to the next similar situation. Now replace “boss” and “employee” with “parent” and “child” and replace “project” with “cleaning bricks from the floor”. Note: It may not be disciplinary, but it will be fun at least.

To sum up, no matter what you do: if it takes more than an hour, make a checklist. Plan, choose activities to do, and then get to work. Once you finish, use your experience and try to predict what else might possibly go wrong. The next step of working on the list is to complete it with experience from its use. Also take into an account situations that occur because… something was missing. Not necessarily due to poor memory. What has changed are the circumstances in which you acted and these changes should simply be taken into account. While making a checklist, it is always worth to use the experience of specialists in this field.

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