Here on the Simpletivity channel, I talk an awful lot about to-do lists and it's very true that a to-do list is a type of checklist.
As you're going through your day, you're checking things off or striking things through.
But today I wanna talk about recurring checklists.
These are checklists that you can use on a recurring basis and are gonna help you so you don't have to remember certain things as a part of your day.
Welcome
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And I wanna give an extra big thanks to Rob Joseph for today's video.
Rob gave me the suggestion for focusing in on checklists opposed to just to-do lists.
Checklists we can use on a recurring basis.
Travel Packing List
So let me start off with an example of a checklist that I use on a regular basis, and that is my travel packing list.
Here you can see I've got a variety of things, a lot of them are clothes, but it also includes some things like my passport, my earbuds, and maybe both my dress shoes and my sneakers.
Now here's the thing, I actually travel quite frequently and, as a result, you know, I pretty much know this list very, very well. Most of the time I probably don't even need to refer to this list.
And you probably have other activities in your life in which you've done them so often you think to yourself, "I don't even need this checklist."
Well, I might argue that's precisely the time when you need the checklist because when we start to feel a little confident, that's exactly when we forget the tie and oh no there's gonna be a formal function at this destination.
Or oh no, I forgot my sneakers and I do want to go for a run.
That is the great power in using checklists. You don't have to store this information in your head at all. You can just refer to the checklist when you're doing certain activities.
End of Work Day Checklist
So let's take a look at a few other examples that I have here.
The checklist that I have here is called an end of work day checklist and this can be great if you want to end your day on a positive note and maybe make sure that you don't forget anything or that you've crossed off a few things on a regular basis.
So I've got a few examples here including reviewing my inbox to make sure that there's nothing urgent that I can safely ignore my inbox or ignore email for several hours. Maybe I want to check to make sure that there's no remaining voicemail on my phone. Perhaps you've got an activity, something that you need to send to someone else or something that you need to update on a regular basis. So in my example I've got send new leads to Sales Manager. And then reviewing my schedule for tomorrow and reviewing my to-do list as well.
The other nice thing about using a checklist like this is that we don't skip over anything or we don't rush the process. If you know when you created the checklist or when I created this checklist that these are good things. These are things that I really should be doing in the last 10 minutes of my day. It's great to be able to run through them and just check them off as I go.
Now, in today's example I'm using Google Keep to show you these checklists but of course you can use a checklist in almost any other tool. Whether you use Keep or Trello or Evernote or Todoist, hopefully your project management tool or your to-do list app has the capability to have a checklist.
And the other nice thing in most of the apps and technology that we use, here you can see I've crossed everything off of my end of workday checklist, what I can do is I can actually go down here and just say uncheck all items so when I'm finished I can say uncheck uncheck all items and now I'm ready for tomorrow. Now I'm ready to use this checklist again in the future.
Let me show you two other quick ones here.
Weekly Review Checklist
I've got a weekly review checklist.
Especially if there's something that you don't do daily. Maybe this is something I only do once a week, maybe you've got a monthly review or a quarterly review.
You can put it all here within a checklist. Make sure that you don't forget any of those steps.
And keep in mind these are living, breathing documents or checklists. These are things where you know I might add a few things over time and I might remove, or revise, or adjust a few things over time as well.
Morning Routine Checklist
The last checklist I wanted to show you here is entitled "Morning Routine" and hopefully you've got some kind of routine, and well we all have some kind of routine but hopefully you've got a productive and a positive routine built into your day.
So how are you gonna start your day so you can set yourself up for success? And you know over time I might adjust things here. Maybe I want to review my schedule for the day after I come back from my run or after I have my breakfast, or something along those lines.
Maybe over time I realized you know what, I don't want to do this at that time, I don't want to do it at all. That's fine, I can remove it from this checklist.
I think this is especially important when you are starting a new routine or you're starting a weekly review or whatever it is to have some type of checklist so you can save your mental energy for more important tasks and for more important activities.
Conclusion
So I hope I've given you a few ideas of how you can use checklists in your day.
If you're already using a checklist, I'd love to hear from you and I would invite you to share it with us in the comments down below.
I know there's gonna be many others who are going to be excited to see some of your checklist ideas and how they help you to stay productive.
And if not, hopefully I've given you some new ideas on how you can include checklists in as a part of your day.
Thank you so much for watching. I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
