Today on episode #078 of Teaching in Higher Ed: The power of checklists

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything–a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps–the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.

A to-do list is what to do, a checklist is how to do it:

A checklist is a documented process for something you’ll do daily; a to-do list is something you assembled yourself that you need to do at a certain point of your day:

Philip Crawford, software entrepreneur on Quora, gives his definition:

A checklist ensures communication and confirmation among members of a team and catches errors.

There are Two kinds of checklists:

Advice for making checklists:

Read her article about checklists HERE

Atul Gawande lists things to consider when making a checklist: