My Personal Checklist Manifesto

Cleaning tasklist by day of week Daily task list

I said in the previous post that I would show pictures of my attempt at some kind of personal checklist, an idea I’ve been thinking about for awhile.  It comes from two sources:  The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, a book I mention in my own book, and Marla Cilley, the Flylady.  Surely you’ve heard of her.  I think her original book, Sink Reflections, shows up in my bibliography.  (Just so you know:  I signed up for her e-mails and lasted about a week, as I couldn’t stand the deluge, the avalanche of chirpy messages I got daily.  Yikes!  And I do not, not, not go around breathing in and thinking ‘I love” and then breathing out and thinking ‘myself.’  Double yikes.  Or yuck.)  Anyway, Cilley recommends that you keep a regular-size three-ring notebook with every conceivable task laid out, put in sheet protectors, and mark off the day’s/week’s/month’s lists with a washable marker. When you’re ready to start again, rub off the checkmarks.  But this just wasn’t something I was ever going to do.  Where would I keep the notebook?  I thought about putting up laminated lists in various places, but that didn’t seem workable either.

Then I got my adorable Filofax organizer, my Christmas present to myself, along with my new smartphone.  Having these new tools has changed my life​, because now pretty much everything I need to take along with me on a regular basis is all in this one container.  (You can see the top of the phone peeking out of the back pocket.)  The front of the organizer holds my credit cards, and then there are dividers to hold calendar pages, to-do pages, and note-taking pages.  (Ann Ortlund’s book also talks about carrying a notebook.)  It also came with a nice heavyweight sheet protector page. ‘Hmmm,’ I thought.  I could use that for a Cilley-like checklist page right in with everything else.  Finally today I got the list made, although it may need a little tweaking. (And it took a fair amount of measuring and trimming to get the list to fit, the evidence of which is in the pictures.)  You can see, I hope, that I’ve marked off the “morning routine” boxes but don’t have the “Friday housework” done. That’s okay.  I’ll get right on it as soon as I finish this post and the weekly newsletter.  I promise.

It may seem rather silly to go to the trouble of doing this for tasks you already know to do; Gawande’s book definitively proves that a checklist is a great tool.  Any prod or nudge that will help me stay consistent is a great boon; the “strategy of convenience” and the “strategy of monitoring” are both relevant here.  (Gretchen Rubin is a great fan of checklists herself.)  This post has almost more links than regular text, doesn’t it?  Maybe I’d better quit–and go check off a few items.