How Making Checklists can Help You Improve Your Life
Checklists can literally save lives.
Checklists can literally save lives. When the U.S. Army Air Corps introduced the B-17 bomber during WWII an experienced aviator crashed the plane during its second demonstration flight. After this tragedy the Army required that pilots use a checklist before taking off. This is the same type of checklist we see pilots use today that helps to avoid crashes.
Checklists also reduce deaths in hospitals. When checklists have been implemented for use by surgical teams, deaths dropped 40 percent. Similar results have been seen when checklists are required for doctor’s inserting central lines into their sick patients. The insertion of central lines can be a key source of infections and checklists have been shown to greatly reduce these infections.
Introducing checklists into these domains had a huge impact on their improvement. So how can a tool which saves lives help improve yours?
In this article, I’ll be sharing with you the major benefits of creating lists that can level up your life.
Itemizing your ideas, plans and reminders can be useful in so many ways, here are some of the benefits of making lists to organize your life :
1. Reducing anxiety
When too much is going on in our lives, we tend to feel anxious and stressed. As a result, we struggle to properly function even on the simplest daily tasks. Thoughts may seem harmless but when you overthink them, your mind becomes cluttered and your mental health can go downhill.
If you are overwhelmed by a huge task coming up, you need to remember that you are physically capable of doing one thing at a time. By writing things down, you will be making sure that you aren’t going to forget anything which will also help you set both your mind and thoughts free and hereby reduce your anxiety.
Instead of going through a hard time remembering all that you have to do (which may not be much, however our brains have a tendency to exaggerate things when we are anxious), keeping a checklist is going to save you a lot of time and energy.
2. Increasing productivity and discipline
We all have an inward desire and dream to change but discipline is often the missing ingredient. Procrastination always gets in your way to actually get things done. However, keeping a checklist challenges you and holds you accountable for the development of your life.
A checklist allows you to get more done by being not only a safe place to write down our tasks but also by being the essence of your motivation.
When you cross something off a checklist, you experience a small amount of success and you get a dopamine rush which fuels you to repeat the actions resulting in the success. Neuroscientists refer to this as “self-directed learning.”
By using checklists, you are keeping yourself motivated to do something and to take the same actions in order to feel the same satisfaction
3. Making delegating easier
When you have a list of tasks to do, there are two important questions you should be asking yourself before crossing any item :
Does it have to be done by me? Does it have to be done today?
It becomes much easier to hand certain things over to someone else who is more concerned by the task. Having a checklist is going to make delegating a lot easier by helping you instruct someone to tackle whether one task or more from your list.
4. Reaching your goals
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Checklists are easy to create, but their impact can be huge. When you set goals for yourself, you are acknowledging your need for a plan in order to achieve them. By having a checklist, you can reach your goals quicker and accomplish what you want in life. The things done consistently add up to big things in the long run.
Your goals are much easier to achieve when you break them into small pieces that are much more attainable. Instead of aiming for a long-term goal, you start by passing milestones, one at a time. And by keeping them in a checklist, you can always go back and review your progress throughout the process.
Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
If you are not used to checklists, the question you may be asking now is: How do I start?
There are a lot of types of lists you can make to get your life together. You can create lists for grocery shopping, for travel packing or even a bucket list of movies you want to watch, the possibilities are endless. Although, I will be sharing my top 3 useful lists to Up-Level your life:
1- Task lists
The instant satisfaction granted by crossing items off a checklist can be used to trick yourself into getting things done. The feeling of learning and motivation comes from the small wins which are why your mundane to-do list must have a make-over. For example, you can get inspired by video games and create a game-like structure for your tasks. You can put each goal under a specific category, define the rough points and establish the levels you can and want to reach.
You can apply this to your daily life tasks or for a long-term project by :
- Defining your “SMART” Goals or sub-tasks (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound)
- Evaluating and analyzing progress
- Rewarding yourself when completing actions and tasks
Checklists are only as useful as our ability to action each step.
2- Regular life-review
You can direct your life with intention and live your days purposefully by dedicating time to think about the past periods; whether it’s a daily, weekly or monthly review. Making a review checklist is an opportunity to reflect on what went well and what didn’t and it also helps planning for the week ahead. “What was I doing all this time?” This is the question you don’t want to be asking yourself. The review list is an insurance that your daily work is helping you reach your goals, it can also help you create your future to-do lists since you can process all your loose-ends, update your tasks and create new ways to improve your life and work.
“The Weekly Review will sharpen your intuitive focus on your important projects as you deal with the flood of new input and potential distractions coming at you the rest of the week.” — David Allen, Getting Things Done
3- “If…, then…”
Checklists are also an effective tool when it comes to mental health. We may often have mixed feelings towards some situations and we forget the way we would normally react. The “if…, then…” checklists can help you in such cases. For example, if you are feeling slightly depressed, having a list of people that you can call or activities that make you feel happy is proven to be useful.
“If…, then…” checklists can also be used in other contexts. They can be your backup plan and help you save the day and they can also be your discipline measures when you want to stop a bad habit. When it comes to a nebulous habit change like “stop eating unhealthy food”, the checklist can help you identify the “triggers” and create a series of if-then plans for how you’ll overcome them.
Lists are useful but if you don’t use them, there is no point in making them. You have to make sure to store them in a safe place, somewhere you check regularly, which will help you stick to them. You can also choose someone who will make sure you are following through to help you stay on track.
The journey to living your dream life can be a long one, but it all starts with small steps; the small wins on your Checklists!
