To-do lists are a very efficient tool that can help you stay organized in your busy life and make it easier to achieve big goals. Every professional or well-organized person should develop the habit of making lists. If you don't put your time on the list, you will find that your time is always filled up by other people's lists.
Imagine you have the following things to do simultaneously and as quickly as possible:
Your boss asked you to complete the anniversary celebration plan within two days;
you are taking an AI course and have an AI industry insight report to hand in this week;
you have a cooperation conference call in the afternoon and need to prepare cooperation ideas in advance;
you need to write 1 to 3 articles on the self-media platform every week;
you need to hold a meeting with the production and research department to get user demand feedback...
After hearing this, do you have a clear idea in your mind about how to do everything, or do you just feel confused, anxious and irritated?
In work and life, there are often more and more difficult tasks than those listed above , and we often have to deal with various things on multiple lines. People who can solve problems in an orderly manner have one thing in common: they have a checklist mindset.
Checklist thinking is to organize everything that needs to be done in the form of a checklist, write down the principles and key points, and strictly follow the checklist to maximize the possibility of success. It is a way of self-management thinking that seems simple, but its effect is very significant.
Investment guru Buffett once said that the reason why he is more successful in investing than others is not only because he makes the right decisions, but also a very important reason is that he can avoid making some stupid mistakes.
A checklist is an essential way to get things done right. Even the famous Science magazine published a book review that bluntly declared: Everyone should have a little checklist.
A surgical checklist can reduce the rate of surgical infections from 11% to 0%, and has become a guiding principle for more than 2,000 hospitals around the world.
A construction checklist reduces the annual construction accident rate to less than 0.00002%;
An investment list increased the market value of an investment portfolio by 160%.
With a checklist, at least you won’t lose even basic points.
1. Make a list to determine the focus of work and life, and establish the standard of "first things first". Time is fleeting. If you don't have any plans for a certain period of time, there will be a vacuum in your life. You will easily be attracted by various short-term temptations and waste your time.
2. Make a list to help you find out what you missed and prevent mistakes. The brain is used for thinking, not for memorizing. After all, the brain's memory limit is 7 plus or minus 2. Making a list one by one will make things more logical and less likely to be missed.
3. Making a list is a very healing thing. Writing a list is a "healing" activity that can calm people down. Putting your worries on paper allows you to focus on them without having to remember them, which will reduce your anxiety. You can input things into your phone and let the phone's memory share the burden of memory for you.
Here are some steps and tips for managing your to-do list :
1. Clarify your goals. Clarify what goals or tasks you want to manage. This can be a specific project, a daily workflow, or some personal to-do items.
2. Make a list. Break down your goals or tasks into specific steps or subtasks and make a list. Each step or subtask should be specific and measurable to facilitate tracking and evaluation.
3. Sort by priority. Sort the tasks on the list according to importance and urgency. This will help you better allocate time and resources and prioritize important and urgent tasks.
4. Complete the list item by item. If it is a team or multi-person project, tasks need to be assigned to appropriate members and everyone's responsibilities and completion time need to be clearly defined.
5. Review the list content regularly. Regularly check the completion status of the list and update the progress in a timely manner. For unfinished tasks, analyze the reasons and take measures to solve them.
6. Feedback and adjustments. During the execution of the task, timely collect feedback and make adjustments. If you find that a certain step or strategy does not work, modify the list in time.
7. Review regularly. Review past inventory management experiences regularly, summarize lessons learned, and continuously optimize inventory management methods.
In addition, there are some other suggestions that can help you manage your list better, such as keeping the list concise and clear, avoiding redundant and complicated descriptions ; setting a reasonable completion time, avoiding procrastination or excessive compression of time ; and cultivating good habits, such as checking the list every day and updating progress in a timely manner .
In short, making lists is a simple and effective way to help us better organize and manage tasks, projects, or daily activities, helping us to better improve work efficiency and reduce omissions and errors.
There are many things that need to be listed in the to-do list at work and in life. After making the list, check and tick them one by one before meetings, before going out, before the arrival of holidays, etc., to ensure that no mistakes or problems are forgotten or missed. Our time and energy are very limited. Only by not giving ourselves trouble in trivial matters can we go all out at work and devote ourselves to creating a happy life.
1. Reading List
2. Home emergency supplies list
Recommended list of emergency supplies for families (basic version)
3. Travel list
4. One-week fitness plan list
One-week fitness plan checklist
5. Pomodoro Technique Activity List
Pomodoro Technique Activity List Form
6. Live broadcast equipment list
Live broadcast equipment list (must-have for beginners)
In addition to these lists, you can also make supermarket shopping lists, life wish lists, decluttering lists, financial lists, movie lists, healthy food lists, meeting lists, project launch lists , etc. In short, you can plan many things in your work and life in an orderly manner by making lists. Is it time for a spring cleaning? Make a list! Is it time to make a work plan? Make a list!
Since checklist thinking is so important to our work and life, how can we cultivate checklist thinking? "Deliberate practice" is a good way to cultivate it .
Regardless of the industry, field, or development of habits or thinking, the method of improvement follows a universal principle, and this universal principle is deliberate practice.
"Deliberate Practice" reading notes
In short, checklist thinking is a very widely used way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that helps us open the door to a new world. It can be used for practice in any aspect of life and work.
Of course, don’t forget to strictly follow the list, and then improve your list based on actual feedback until you form a mechanism that can operate stably. When you encounter any problem, you can analyze it in your mind, sort it out logically, and make a list. At this time, you have a list mindset.
Free Online Collaborative Mind Map and Flowchart 
