Checklists - What, How and Why

What

Breaking abstract ideas down into a series of small actionable chunks

Why

• Convert theoretical knowledge from reading to practice (tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge). Eg: Reading a book, imitating a good some workflow
• Make connections between fragmented knowledge. The act of creating a checklist forces the mind to think of all the parts involved in completing a task.
• Minimizes uncertainty and anxiety..
  • Almost anything can be reduced to a series of steps — an algorithm.
• In a team setting checklists democratize power. They are meant to be shared with your team because this allows you to put all brains on the problem.

How

1. Ask: What do you want to accomplish
2. Collate: Collect a list of reputable and proven sources.
3. Analyse the data with respect to the following:
   1. Is it useful for my aim?
   2. How can I apply this?
   3. What other data do I need?
   4. How does this link with other data I have?
4. Connect: Form an outline from the data you collected
5. Draft the checklist: Invert- start with endpoint in mind. It should involve the how as detailed as needed, data and definitions, examples
6. Test and revise

• Every checklist must have clear ‘pause points’. Pause points are moments during a task where one should stop and run through the lists before moving forward.
• If the task requires a long check list, then the task needs to be broken down into subtasks(with more narrow focus) before imposing checklists on it.
  Eventually you won’t need the checklist