Alright. A month ago I was at Rally (Rally!) and had a bunch of shivanautical insights related to checklists.
Namely that I need them. Badly. Oh, so very, very badly! But also that I don’t like them very much.
Here’s what I wrote about checklists while doing some stone skipping:
Why checklists are so very useful.
- They are a map.
- They tell you what to do and where to go and when.
- They create forms and shapes to hold things for you.
- They let you not hold so much crap in your head.
- They make spaciousness. See also: the flow chart of spaciousness.
- They bring in new patterns and order.
- They allow you to biggify because there aren’t so many limitations on growth — i.e. the limitations based on holding everything in your head (again).
- They save lives. Surgeons and pilots use them to be more efficient, work smarter and avoid catastrophe.
- They allow for growth in all directions.
- They are adaptable.
- They give you the structure/form/container/that lets you have freedom and play!
- They are queenly. Yay, sovereignty.
- Things can still happen if/when I’m not there to do them.
- They allow for important things to be transmitted to groups of people.
- They create room for rest.
Why I resist making/using checklists, even when I know I need them:
The name. Bleh.
Any other negative associations?
Ahahahaha. Yes. Like these:
[+ grown-ups] [+boring] [+predictable] [+should] [+inowanna iguana!] [+resistance] [+Bargal-esque]
Ah. Okay. Bargal was this company I worked for in Israel where everything had to be filed in triplicate.
And I think the whole checklist thing has morphed into a symbol of exactly that kind of depressing, time-consuming, stick-up-the-ass system-for-its-own-sake which I associate with that incredibly straight job.
So yes. Definitely resistance!
What I want from this new kind of checklist:
Qualities of:
[+navigation]
[+freedom]
[+play]
[+possibility]
[+advantage]
[+speed]
[+agility]
[+flexibility]
[+guidance]
[+ adaptability]
[+treasure]
Check baby check baby 1234.
Alright. So what am I going to call this new kind of checklist?
Is it an index?
A listing? Like listing to port! Tee hee!
Treasure inventory?
Treasure registry. Treasuregistry. No good.
A treasure checklist. A treasure chest list. A chest list. CHECKERS.
I’m calling it checkers. For now. Where’s my Checkers?
So that was a month ago.
I came up with CHECKERS for each part of leading Rally.
And then didn’t print any of them out.
Last night I was running the Rally orientation, and it came time to explain the fine art of Schmurphling. Which is a thing that I invented. For Rally. It’s awesome. You should come to Rally and schmurphle with us some time.
And I was all, oh tralala this is not a problem. I explained all the different and varied Rules of Schmurphling and it was fine.
We schmurphled. These particular Rallions seem to be exceptionally accomplished schmurphlers and we were getting into some pretty advanced schmurphling, dare I say.
Then we finished and I realized I’d forgotten to mention the SECOND MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF SCHMURPHLING, which is that if you don’t feel like being the schmurphler you can call Silent Retreat!
But I forgot because I didn’t have my CHECKERS.
“And that’s why you always have a checklist…”
In my head, I’m imagining J. Walter Weatherman saying that, of course.
Things I am reminding myself of right now:
What Cairene would say: systems are always in motion. You add, you subtract, you make changes. You look at what is working. And then what you can mess with.
What Hiro would say: go to the essence. Look at what a checklist gives you (support, containment, permission) and fill up on those qualities first.
What I would say: It’s all practice. You play. You ask questions. You experiment. You move the pieces around. You remember the fractal flowers. You dance on it.
Each piece is useful.
Every understanding — about why checklists are powerful, why I resist them, what I need to change in order to make them work for me — is useful.
And there’s time.
Everything moves and changes.
At the next Rally (#12!), I’ll have a slightly different system.
And I’ll learn something new that will help make it better. Something about what isn’t working. Something about what might help.
I’ll establish a new hypothesis, invent a new metaphor, wear a new costume.
At the very least, it will be interesting.
Play with me?
No advice please, but stories of your own flawed systems are welcome.
So is humming TRALALA with me, making up silly names for checklists or talking about any of this stuff.
Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads!
Follow
I am an adorer of checklists. I made quite a few, but the only one I really use is the what I need to pack checklist. It includes everything with factors for the length of time I’m away. Now in the “ohgodistillneedtopackandit’salreadymidnight”-panic I go to the list and am done in 10 min without arriving at my destination and thinking “why’d I pack this?” I also used to use a lot of checklists in teaching, so I would know what to say on a first day or before an exam and such.
The one I should use more often is the “what to do when you feel frazzled and out of sync” checklist.
When I was new to checklisting I resisted them because I didn’t understand that they are only hypothetical, that if they didn’t work I could throw them out or adapt them. Also I felt self-conscious if I used them in front of other people, as if using them were a sign that I do not care enough about them to remember all that. Where instead it is a sign that I care sooo much I am making extra sure that I don’t forget anything.
Miss P! Everything you say! Yes yes yes. What a lovely reminder in the morning (it’s morning here).
Morning brain-shake (as in, shake it and see what falls out) on checklists – I don’t need to name mine because I don’t need to talk about them. So I don’t use the name enough to get icky about it. Ahhh… Hmmm… gazetteers, indexes…
(here comes the magic wand: http://www.onelook.com/?w=*%3Alist&ls=a)
Lineup! Hee hee hee. Just spotted that in a list of related words. Like the lineup of a band which changes. Each member has their own quality and purpose.
I don’t like the words which imply completeness or comprehensiveness – catalogue, index, inventory. Or sequentialness – queue, itinerary. Programme.
Compendium! That’s how I feel when I make them – like I’m throwing together all the stuff out of my head into one place. Compendiums are mishmashes but full of good stuff. Bit of a mouthful though.
OOOOOOH. Carte du jour. I thought it would be a day’s to-do list, but: a menu listing dishes available on a particular day. Oh, that’s very nice, I think it might work for me. Hmm!
Hitparade is making me giggle. Pronounced as in German of course!
Chalkboard, if you’re into calling stuff stuff that it isn’t – as in, ‘x is on my chalkboard’ when there’s no board and no chalk, but there is fluidity and a sense of process about it. Or a slate. Which – of course – links to clean slates.
ah! Time to disengage from this search before I get lost in it. Off for breakfast thinking about quipus. Love!
Sarra!
Wat a great website that comes up with so many words!!
I like ‘little black book’.
A little black book of ‘oh dear who am i supposed to dance with next?’ Or a little black book of ‘thoughts just for me’.
Also interesting: “hit list”. hahaha. Hit that!
I have a cute cute pretty little box from the bookshop across the street – and I keep my white index cards in it with all kinds of reminders of things i didn’t want to forget. Lists, thoughts, ‘things to do next month’.
Oh what about “Hagiology”. That could mean anything, really.
Well, now I’m just going to be saying check baby check baby 1234 allll day long, over and over again. Coincidentally, I created a checkers this morning without even realizing it, and it put me at ease, organized my brain and made me feel so very on top of these things that I had previously thought I couldn’t wrap my mind around. So I suppose that I, too, like playing checkers. Check check!
My resistance to check lists is so great that the thought of them — reading about them — makes me a little tum sick. Ugh. Yet, yet, yet…I think you make such excellent, affirming points here, and I can feel myself wanting to stretch into it.
I am at a major point of stuckosity in my work…seeing, feeling, knowing what needs to happen but just totally saying NO! to breakin’ it down (hammer pants!) and gettin’ it done.
I will read this again later…
I love-love-love my lists — would be completely lost in all aspects of my life without them — but yes oh yes do they need a better name. “Ticket” is having some resonance with me this morning — that sense of being a necessary to move ahead but also kind of fun in a vacation-y way. Must play with this some more…
Last night I thought to myself:
“I can make a list
I can prioritize it
Color code it
Re-arrange if necessary
I can put every single thought in my head down on that list…
When I cross something off I feel full of achievement
But how the H do I get started on it?”
I always “intend to make lists” but I never do, even though I find it exhausting to keep everything in my head. I’m not a systems person so it is really difficult for me to sit still and brainstorm.
Normally all the things that would go on a checklist come to me in the shower. So until I can have a waterproof board I’m giving up on them. 🙂
I adore lists. When I went on sabbatical, I spent a happy eight months making sabbatical lists. It was equally as fun as the sabbatical. I also love to cross things off lists. It occurs to me that they would be even more fun if I called them Checkers. Or my own fun name.
My trouble is that I don’t always think to make them. Besides the usual to-do lists, or vacation lists or .. Like, I had a million and one ideas floating around in my head and various notebooks. It took months to realize that maybe I needed a list of ideas. Or, I had years of data on the pup’s swallowing episodes that was rolling around in my head so I could compare to new experiences and maybe come to conclusions. Until someone suggested it, it didn’t even occur to me to write it down. I don’t really have an idea right now – it’s just good to notice.
Packing checklists do work well for me. I also sometimes am comforted by lists that are essentially schedules, in which I assign the things I want to do into assorted blocks of time.
The really important thing for me to remember is that lists can always, always, ALWAYS be changed. I can cross an item off a list because I’ve already taken care of the item by doing it, or I can cross an item off a list because I’ve already taken care of it by deciding not to do it. The list isn’t carved in stone; it’s scribbled in ink, and ink is fluid.
Forgot to add — what’s really helpful for me about adding timelines to some of my lists is that in the process, I gain more clarity about the amount of time I’m really working with. I can look at my list as it takes shape and think, hang on — how many things am I trying to accomplish in this two-hour period? That seems a bit unlikely, doesn’t it?
what I love about lists is making them, -(to dos, i wants, i wills, I affirm,etc) and letting them go,putting them away…then finding them again much later- months or even years….and seeing how the sweet universe listened and responded to my whispers. Thanks for your site-cool.
I also adore lists. To-Do lists, library lists, packing lists. Indexes, schedules, itineraries. Lists lists lists lists lists!
Listing to port: LOL
Where I LIST FAIL is when my list becomes a palimpsest of lists and I can no longer tell what the flaming hells needs to go first on the list.
There once was a girl with some lists
to cleverly manage her trysts
until she neglected
to check one; rejected,
she moped off to go and get pissed.
I read once that the (so-called) Left Brain *likes* checklists/actions and the Right Brain *likes* questions. I created a page that has a column for each. That made me happy under the circumstances. I might go back and revisit that idea right now. Perhaps swaying from side to side as I write (apropos of listing).
LOL @ Listing to port.
Oh yes checklists… They’re so useful, but yeah, the name is lame… Totally understand why they would bring up so much resistance! On the other hand:
I love them (a checklist by any other name…), to me they’re a kind of letter from Slightly Future Me, saying, “Honey, you’re going on an exciting adventure, I’m so proud of you and so happy for you, these are the things you should know in advance to have more fun – and I know because I’ve been there: pack X, don’t forget to do Y, and also Z, etc.”
Or an insider’s tip: you know, a mysterious, heartstoppingly good-looking stranger (an International Person of Mystery, maybe?) walks up to you and says with a wink “About this thing that you’re planning / organizing / attending, I thought you might like to know a few things… All this is between you and me…” And then they’re gone.
Checklists are a kind of sneak preview, a promise of more fun (because organized = takes your mind off the small stuff so you can enjoy the important stuff!), they make me feel taken care of (like a loving parent packing your bags for summer camp when you’re too excited to do anything else than running around in loud glee), and also you belong to that super-secret club of ultra-trained glamorous Helper Mice – the ones who always have tissue paper, lip balm and Band-Aids when their friends need it 😉
They have a secret handshake.
What a great link, Sarra! I’m laughing about the variety of words people are suggesting instead of checklist.
I always say, the dictionary is my friend! Especially if it includes a thesaurus!
I love lists. But somehow I don’t like checklists.
The only successful checklist I have (successful because I use it!) is for groceries. It’s organized according to the layout of the grocery store I go to most often. I check each item I need when I discover the need. When I go to the store, I can very very quickly get everything and get out of there.
On the other hand, I have tons of lists that are not checklists that I use often. They might actually BE checklists but I don’t think of them as such. They’re just lists, and sometimes the lists are Do Things in This Order.
Copying my lists (and editing them and improving them) is a great stress reducer for me. By hand, on paper. When everything seems to be spinning out of control, I take my notebook and start copying something: the list of birthdays, the list of things that make me happy…
I like checklists, but I would like them to just appear; I don’t want to have to write them and decide what is the right order and so forth.
What I want to get is a checklist for a morning routine. I always want to and forget to do things like drybrush and moisturize and put on perfume. Because in the morning I am busy thinking about the DAY, not the morning. So I need a checklist, so it becomes a ritual. But I really suck at routine, I always forget, or I feel pressured to do things JUST SO, so that when I’m under a deadline or I got up late I don’t do anything because I can’t do it all.
And @chacha1 — I love your limerick. I was looking for the like button, something I NEVER do.
check baby check baby…1234 = awesome 🙂
when i’m feeling especially pissy/oppositional-defiant i make lists of things i’m going to do (aptly named a “to do list”) and lists of things i’m probably NOT going to do, on purpose, just because i don’t feel like it and/or i don’t like the pressure of “SHOULD”s.
sometimes just making the list of things i’m absolutely, positively NOT going to do satisfies some need of mine to flip the bird at the world, and that frees me up to just do the thing already.
i don’t know if this is at all healthy, it’s just my thing at the moment.
TRALALA, yo.
I can’t believe the synchronicity of your post, Havi.
I had JUST come back to my email inbox after beginning to compile my first in a SET of lists of things I need to remember to do when I’m doing repetitive stuff here at work (and want to be able to delegate the tasks to somebody else who will actually then follow the lists!! Hah, does anybody think THAT’s gonna work??)…..
Anyway, thanks SOOO much for reading my mind – as usual!
me
Wie wär’s mit “Wunschzettel”? Wie in was ich wünsche, heute getan zu kriegen oder was ich mir von euch wünsche oder… ‘Cause everything sounds better in German, right? 🙂
Oh! Forgot to read the comments! Hit list is great, and chalkboard… I could so use that myself…
“Hagiology”? Why not Haviology? Or Selma’s logbook or… Ship’s Quests! Let’s go on a quest today!
Yes!
Haviology. It’s just one person. and a duck.
Tralalala Tralalala Haviology Tralala Haaaaavio-ologyyyy Tralalala
Haviology! Yes.
Sounds like a good subject to do a Master in! 😉
I like lists to get all the stuff from swirling around in my head to sweet, silent words on paper. Handwritten of course.
And then I can procrastinate on them. Or do them. Or put the list(s) on a pile, to find them months later when i finally manage to clear my desk –
Oh! Should have done this. But hey – it got done in a way. Maybe things shifted and it wasn’t even necessary to do this one thing on my list. Or I remembered doing it just because writing it down made it easier to really go and do.
Another insight I had many years ago:
Whatever you check from your list – it will NEVER be finished. Something always gets added. So if I’m never done anyway I can start relaxing right now, not only when the highly unlikely moment of “Oh, I’m done!” occurs.
Love to all of you,
Jana
List!
Doesn’t also mean to tilt in the wind?
Oooo checklists! I love making them.
Checking them? Not so much. Unless I get to check things off of them, then YAY! CHECKMARKS!
So… since I love checklists and I love technology and the internet and all the possibilities of improving the likelihood that I’ll remember things I intend to do… my checklist is digital. (The site it’s on even has a silly name: Toodledo~! Woohoo! I do have a referral link–I won’t put it here, but it’s in the sidebar of my blog–that can get me extra months of the advanced features if anyone else signs up for them through me. But I’ve also been totally happy to pay for the advanced features anyways, because they seem like good hardworking people–or is Toodledo JUST ONE GUY?!–and I like showing my appreciation for the value the product brings to me.)
But here’s the key that makes it all work for me: I’ve found a way that makes even CHECKING it fun, because it basically guarantees that I get to check off some things every time I check it. My trick is to have two tasks that are worded like this:
– calmly review things to do (for love & sanity!)
– review completed tasks at the end of the day
The first task encourages me to check my list at the beginning of the day, *calmly*, while reminding myself why the list is useful: I love myself and want to keep my sanity. 😛 The second task encourages me to ensure that I reward myself for the things I’ve done (checkmark sparklepoints!), even if I have to add them to the list just so I can check them off. 🙂
The other thing that makes it all work for me is the same that @spiralsongkat said above: changeability! I relish the freedom to adjust the dates or details of things whenever I like, or even whether it’s on the list at all, all in the name of calm sanity (and in fact, I do this pretty much daily, as part of this task). 🙂 Checklist sovereignty for the win!
Tralala! I *love* [check]lists! I have them for everything:
– packing (otherwise I might go on retreat without a shawl, aaargh!)
– good sources of protein
– things I don’t want to forget to teach my clients
– nightly routine
– morningly routine
– business routine
– writing routine
– places to have coffee that make me feel like I’m on the Continent but that I might otherwise forget to visit
Lately I have been experimenting with punchcards, too. I have one for treats. Because I like treats. And I forget to have them sometimes.
I am resistant to checklists because I feel that they hold you back and place restraints. I always have to remind myself that when you have a checklist it focuses and remembers and does all the boring things FOR YOU so you are FREE to explore awesome adventuresome creativity without the fear of losing *stern nun face* focus!
There is so much to learn in these comments. I love it. So many different ways to deal with lists and lineups and whatnot and even poetry. Thank you everyone.
/swwwwish (that’s me taking off my invisibility cloak long enough to delurk, even if I am late to the party)
I loved this (and I miss ya’ll!)
I’m totally calling all my beloved checklists “dance cards”. As in “is that on my dance card?” and “I’m sorry, my dance card is full.”
Multiple dances mean multiple cards and a master of choreography (me!) And I totally want them to be frilly Victorian things, maintained by a stern, implacable Matron who follows me around shooing away unpleasant distractions.
O.k. gotta go /swwwish (that’s the invisibility cloak gently settling around my shoulders)
Checkers sound awesome. I love “list” but dislike “checklist” so I may have to nab this or metaphor it myself.. 🙂 Brilliant ideas to inspire me here thought ^_^