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Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#51

Post by mistakenot238 »

tmaly wrote: post #3

You are talking about the book The Checklist Manifesto. I use checklists for planning vacation trips and for grocery lists. I also use them to describe processes at work. This has been the most helpful when on-boarding new employees in our group.

Yup, enjoyed reading it. Your on-boarding example has some o erlap with another checklist example given in another book (The E-Myth?) whereby employees at a hotel used comprehensive checklists to ensure that every visitor had the same consistently high quality service during their stay.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#52

Post by mistakenot238 »

0gdd wrote: post #4

There is good book I can recommend on the subject by Atul Gawande: "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right" Basically, keep it simple.

That's the book I'm talking about. Didn't want to mention it in the question incase it sounded too plugy.

It would of been interesting to see the comparisons he would of made if he had spent time with the infrastructure department of a software company.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#53

Post by mistakenot238 »

arca_vorago wrote: post #20

I found my tier 1/2 techs would often miss steps during certain functions, and started making required checklists in jira before jobs could be closed. Rates of "this still isn't fixed" went way down, which is a great, low effort high reward thing in an IT department.

Did you ever have problems getting people to take it seriously? It can be hard to introduce automated Jira gates / hooks without people just seeing them as irritating.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#54

Post by ecesena »

ecesena wrote: post #41

I use the bullet journal [1], except I don't really report for each day. I mostly like the notation to distinguish todo vs ideas vs other stuff. Other times I use notes (typically Apple Notes just because it's auto-synced between mac and iphone, but I don't really care about the app) to create small lists of things I really have to do in order, and then I check them along the way. [1] http://bulletjournal.com

Why downvoted!? Did I misunderstand the question?

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#55

Post by mistakenot238 »

romdev wrote: post #48

Thanks to all for the informative TODO list options. Getting back to the intent of the question... Over the course of my career in financial software development I've participated in several large production events where an upgraded or new application would be deployed overnight to servers that require substantial uptime while serving millions of users. We minimize human error by developing the Go-Live checklist seve…

I probably should of been a bit clearer with the question.

Interesting example. Do you find yourself reusing checklists or are they specific to the job?

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#56

Post by mistakenot238 »

SirLJ wrote: post #28

While building stock trading robots, essentially I am automating check lists from the stock selection, trough the trade until the exit... No guess work, can be precisely back tested, etc... It literally did transform my life and made me free and independent...

Nice. Was this automating stuff like fundermental analysis, ratios, that sort of thing?

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#57

Post by d12bb »

ecesena wrote: post #54
ecesena wrote: post #41

I use the bullet journal [1], except I don't really report for each day. I mostly like the notation to distinguish todo vs ideas vs other stuff. Other times I use notes (typically Apple Notes just because it's auto-synced between mac and iphone, but I don't really care about the app) to create small lists of things I really have to do in order, and then I check them along the way. [1] http://bulletjournal.com

Why downvoted!? Did I misunderstand the question?

checklists != todo lists, might be the reason

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#58

Post by npsimons »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #49
npsimons wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for TODO items, but org-mode specifically has the RESET_CHECK_BOXES property which will reset the checkboxes when a repeating task goes back to it's start state (eg, habits). TODO items can be repeating and there is a way to make it so that a parent heading will switch to DONE when all sub-entries are done (and that parent heading can be repeating as well). Just to add my two cents to the conversation, it's a per…

Might be better to use the checklist as a template, and use a function to create a new file/subtree from it including the date. That way you can archive it and look up later what you did or forgot at a specific day.

This is actually pretty close to what I already do; I've found writing org capture templates cumbersome, so I just have templates in the org files and I cut and paste and then edit as needed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use checklists?

#59

Post by SirLJ »

mistakenot238 wrote: post #56
SirLJ wrote: post #28

While building stock trading robots, essentially I am automating check lists from the stock selection, trough the trade until the exit... No guess work, can be precisely back tested, etc... It literally did transform my life and made me free and independent...

Nice. Was this automating stuff like fundermental analysis, ratios, that sort of thing?

... and more :-)
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