The Simple Genius of Checklists

I have been a flight test and rocket test engineer. Checklists were life, especially in the rocket world. The fantastic thing about checklists is that they both keep you accountable and free your mental resources so that when something happens that one of your checklists don't cover, you know you've at least tried all the sane/expected things. I personally found that backstop freeing and allowed me to use my creativity when it was demanded by things going wrong.

Can anybody recommend a good checklist app for Android? When I search for &quot;checklist&quot; I only find ToDo-List apps that call themselves &quot;checklist&quot; app.<p>What I&#x27;d like is something where you can set a per-checklist timeout after which the list resets everything to unchecked and maybe allow two different ways to view each checklist (or modes): 1. All at once with little check marks that you can check in any order 2. Strictly ordered checklists where you only see the current task and check it to get to the next, ideally with a &quot;3&#x2F;14&quot; indicator or progress bar to know how far you&#x27;ve got through the checklist.<p>Which apps can you recommend?

Surgical Safety Checklists are crucial for preventing what used to be a really shocking number of wrong-patient and wrong-side procedural errors.<p>Taking the good kidney out instead of the diseased one is practically murder.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;patientsafety&#x2F;safesurgery&#x2F;checklist&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.who.int&#x2F;patientsafety&#x2F;safesurgery&#x2F;checklist&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>

But where does one begin to identify the parts of life where a checklist would reduce cognitive load?<p>In IT, some cases are obvious (such as deploying new releases). However, if a process is so repeatable that you could have an accurate checklist, then you could probably automate the process and eliminate the need for the checklist.<p>I would love to know what parts of my life I could relegate to checklists so I could free my mind to focus on just the things that I excel at...

After my partner read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, he set out to help other organizations improve outcomes via the use of checklists. Together, we built <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.manifest.ly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.manifest.ly</a><p>My main feedback from having witnessed thousands of organizations set up their checklists is that they can be used to help teams succeed and they can be used in an oppressive way to &quot;ensure people do what they&#x27;re supposed to do&quot;. Almost always they contain too many steps compared to what they should have and that is usually because the people creating&#x2F;editing the checklists are often not the users of the actual checklist. When the users and editors are the same people, then the quality of the checklist goes up. We use our own tool on a daily bases for processes that have high risks or for processes that we don&#x27;t do very often. They are great safety nets.

I really enjoyed <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;atulgawande.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;the-checklist-manifesto&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;atulgawande.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;the-checklist-manifesto&#x2F;</a>. Very interesting and at times frustrating. You ask yourself why more hospitals can&#x27;t implement success described in this book.

I hate checklists. I&#x27;ve just done an information security checklist at work, 200 questions, lots of them irrelevant, many are very vague, often require evidence that is time consuming to put together. Next week I have a release that I have to put a change ticket in for - another 50 boxes with questions and combos. I&#x27;m ready to quit. Don&#x27;t let checklists turn your company into a bureaucratic hell hole.

Tom Limoncelli had a nice article about how documentation&#x2F;checklists is the beginning of automation in an IT setting.<p>Manual Work Is A Bug: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;queue.acm.org&#x2F;detail.cfm?id=3197520" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;queue.acm.org&#x2F;detail.cfm?id=3197520</a><p>Makes a lot of sense and something I advocate for in my department.

Also worth mentioning the power of engaging our bodies physically and verbally to ensure we&#x27;re engaging with checklists: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pointing_and_calling" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pointing_and_calling</a>

Checklists were life in the USAF working on heavy bombers and the nuclear PRP program.<p>I’ve done a procedure 100 or a 1000 times? Still going down the checklist in the Tech Manual every single time.<p>Humans can’t multitask well and if you miss a step, people can die and planes could crash.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are big fans of checklists,too.[1]<p>Obviously, in a field like investing no checklist is perfect but at-least it&#x27;ll help you avoid <i>common</i> pitfalls.<p>Source: Many of their shareholder&#x27;s letters contain references to their approach. I found another one online.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hurricanecapital.wordpress.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-buffettmunger-investment-checklist&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hurricanecapital.wordpress.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-buffet...</a>

Reminds me of Chernobyl, where some steps within the safety system test checklist had been crossed-out for an unexplained reason and they had to essentially guess what to do. Not that a properly maintained checklist would have necessarily prevented it.

I&#x27;ve invested enough time in a personal checklist for a daily process to get to the point where I feel like the checklist is &quot;helpful&quot;, &quot;minimal&quot; and &quot;complete&quot;. If I had a printer, I would print out a stack of them and record my compliance on paper. I don&#x27;t have a printer, and I&#x27;m not buying one just for this. What&#x27;s the electronic equivalent for recording checklist compliance?

What is the name of the font on that B-17 checklist? It is that mid-century engineering font that I love so much.

The article reminds me of Brendan Gregg&#x27;s talk, &quot;Performance Checklists for SREs&quot;.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zxCWXNigDpA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zxCWXNigDpA</a>

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is a great read due to good writing and interesting case studies, and the underlying message is immensely valuable.

People share some IT-related checklists on GitHub already. It would be cool to see more checklists on non-IT subjects.

While I agree with the overall message, Boeing would not be my first choice for best practices on safety

Has there ever been a platform for experts to build and share checklists and for every&#x2F;any task?

I&#x27;m probably the smartest guy in Romania and can tell you I got my certification that I can do 99% by making sure my usual cognitive load stays at 1%.<p>I was also poor, which means there was no way to enforce my internal policy which means today, 20 years later, I&#x27;m using 99% of my brain power to solve issues a simple state&#x2F;high-powered enforcement checklist would do.<p>At my 90%+ I still dreamed of a better future. Now I only wish my own death. Tomorrow I hope and make sure you all die.