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How do you use checklists in your day to day life? Where have they been most transformative?
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.
So over the last few years we have built, used and iterated on a checklist for this. It has been pivotal in meeting our goals here.
That said, I've made a custom spreadsheet to handle my real-time prioritizing the way I think about it, so I've gone beyond simple lists by quite a bit.
I do feel like I have a decent grasp on the whole range of activities I do, though, from daily pet care/home stuff to social calendar, bills, projects, etc.
I do (1) immediately. I work on (2) until I need a break, and work on (3) for a bit, then go back to doing (2). All 3 lists live in a single text or markdown file, one for each day.
Like most people, I have a bit of an attention deficit, so putting fun and long term useful (but not necessary) tasks on (3) makes it easier to take breaks but still remain productive. An example is writing a blog post.
* Daily work
DONE Check commission goal for EOY and update
DONE Start airtable timing
DONE Log in to TalkDesk (reboot, make sure active)
DONE Sales startup
* DONE select rotating priority of the day, tag with dailyFocus
* DONE check calendar for any major events unprepared for
* DONE check email and star anything urgent - skim. if you don't need to reply right now, don't
* DONE check new leads in uservoice for anything time-sensitive. if you don't need to reply right now, don't
* DONE rearrange plans on calendar to fit meetings etc in the day
Sales general workflow
* DONE Prepare for major interactions today
* DONE 1bd email, including new leads
* Tasks in SFDC: high, >20, or 0 (unweighted
* 2 definite reply email
* Tasks in SFDC: >3
* Contact all of dec/jan closes, to see if do again
* Weekly goals
* follow up on sammy's intros - probably a longer play
* devlearn followups
* Check out read receipts to see how can move along larger deals
* Create jump discontinuities for future, or set up ability to do same
This system, if you can even call it that, works for me for two reasons:
1) It gets the thoughts out of my head, so I don't have a constant "background noise" reminding me of something I have to do.
2) It separates the planning from the doing. This keys off the fact that many people feel good about getting organized, even if we tend to procrastinate on doing actual work. Separating planning from doing turns scary tasks into a short, clear bullet point.
For me (working mainly as a software engineer), the hardest part about any task is scoping and defining it. There are no hard tasks, only vague ones.
Usual stuff: groceries, travel packing list, travel bucket list, ideas, restaurants to go to, date ideas, hiking trails, places to notify about address change, wishlist (things to buy), books to read (separate list for fiction and non-fiction), gift ideas, beers, wines, document checklists for more or less complicated things like mortgage or visa applications, conferences.