Boosting productivity – a core driver focus for most workplaces and managers!
And, when it comes to personal development, professionals are constantly searching for techniques to optimise their time, with the dual aim of getting more done while maintaining a work-life balance.
One such tool is the humble – yet powerful – checklist.
You might find the tips in this blog useful to run through with your team to help identify the why and what of using checklists in their everyday roles and lives; then, you can reap the rewards together.
What can a checklist do for you?
There are many benefits to using checklists in your professional (and personal) life.
A few of these include that checklists are:
A way of ordering your thoughts and tasks – you may relate to having a million tasks and thoughts floating around your head, causing you to jump from task to task or become overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. Checklists enable you to get all these out of your head, order them, focus on the task at hand, and then tick it off before moving on to the next.
An aid when prioritising your time – ordering tasks by priority is much easier when you know the breadth of tasks ahead of you, so you focus on completing the most important tasks first.
Great at helping build habits and confidence – in most professions, some tasks need to be done regularly and in a particular order, whether moving through your daily morning tasks or prepping a patient for major surgery. With a detailed checklist, you can be confident that all bases are covered and that you’re fully prepared to do the task at hand to the high standard you’re striving for.
A powerful tool for increasing work satisfaction – there’s no feeling quite like getting to the end of a day, gazing down at your fully completed checklist, and seeing how much you’ve accomplished – that’s the superpower of the checklist! Even when you need to roll some over to the next day, you’ll go home knowing you’ve got a game plan for the next day.
Tips for creating your checklists
As checklists can be used in so many ways, what you include on your checklist is highly individual and tailored to you and the specific purpose of your list. However, when planning out your checklists, remember to keep them SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. To support this, a few tips include:
Ensuring you have separate checklists for different purposes and can quickly access them when needed. For example, you may have a daily checklist to manage your tasks, which you want easily accessible throughout the working day - you might even laminate them so they can be reused each day. Other checklists you only call upon occasionally to complete specific tasks can be stored – in physical or digital form – and used when needed.
Keep your checklists short and realistic. If you list 20 larger tasks to get done in one working day, chances are you’re not going to get them all done, throwing off your schedule for the next day and your job satisfaction! So, keep your checklists realistic and achievable, including what you’re reasonably sure can be achieved in the available time.
If you finish everything on the list, we’re sure you’ve got many other projects you could dive into!Plan to do some of the more significant (or less desirable) tasks first thing in the morning so you knock them off while you’re fresh.
Allow for disruption. When was the last time you got through the day without something unexpected occurring that even just slightly threw off your schedule? Particularly in roles in the healthcare industry where being responsive to needs is part of every day, disruption is hard to avoid. So, keep this in mind when creating time-sensitive checklists – particularly your daily task list.
Create tomorrow’s checklist today. Doing this before you go home at the end of the day helps you to leave work at work, feeling that you’ve got tomorrow’s game mapped out. And in the morning, you can launch straight in.
Next steps
Now comes the big question: Is it digital or paper-based?
This is up to your personal preference and what works best for your role. Many people enjoy the physical act of ticking off a checklist, while others appreciate the convenience and accessibility of having their checklists in softcopy. And a device you ‘write’ on with a stylus can be a great blend of the two.
A good approach that the Augmentum team have found is to create daily task lists in Outlook so we can easily coordinate them with our emails, calendars and files. Other checklists for specific processes can be created in Word or Excel files and stored appropriately for quick and easy shared access.
We see many healthcare industry clients who find it beneficial to print checklists off and keep laminated copies in relevant locations based on purpose. For example, a morning routine for your reception team or a clean-up process after a specific patient treatment. Looking at the purpose of the checklist, what needs to be done, and the best approach will help your team determine the best strategies.
If you’re interested in learning more about the power of the humble checklist, you may enjoy The Checklist Manifesto by acclaimed surgeon Atul Gawande. This bestselling book explores how checklists can and have been used in healthcare settings to save lives and build significant efficiencies across healthcare organisations, as well as the opportunities they present to achieve immediate improvement and benefits across an array of fields of work.
The Augmentum team provides a broad range of consultancy and management services, supporting healthcare business owners and decision-makers in many key areas, such as strategy development and action planning, building effective foundations and teams, keeping your finger on the pulse, and driving growth and success.
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