Today is Checklist Day—a day to celebrate The Checklist.
The day actually commemorates the first use of a pilot checklist after the crash of a B-17 on October 30, 1935. After that crash, the Army Air Corps developed a Pilot Checklist to make sure similar accidents did not happen again. While this holiday is not widely celebrated, I am certainly glad that the checklist has a day to be recognized.
I love checklists. Checklists help me get all of the things done that I would otherwise forget. In the book “Getting Things Done“, the author David Allen introduces the idea of “open loops”. An Open Loop is “pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is”. One way to close the open loops in our lives is to write a checklist. I have written several times before about how I use Todoist and Anylist, as well as simple pad and paper to keep lists. These list repeatedly save me from forgetting something very important.
One type of checklist that I think this day celebrates most is the true checklist. A preformed checklist list is a list of little tasks to complete a project. In Todoist, there is a feature to build a checklist through their template feature. This enables the user to use an old list as a template to complete a future project. I use this type of checklist when I move. In the Army, we move about every three years. After doing this about three times, I made a list of all of the tasks to complete as we move from one place to another. A preplanned checklist always makes the trip go a little smoother.
So, Happy Checklist Day! I challenge you to think of a task that you do regularly and turn it into a list, this will save you time and frustration each time you pull it out.
—–
Graphic: Freeimages.com