Ask HN: What are your go-to checklists? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your go-to checklists?

21 pointsKennyFromIT20 comments

People use checklists all the time. What are some examples of checklists that you find extremely helpful/useful?

I've tried to checklist my life for years after reading The Checklist Manifesto. I later learned that the best checklists are not in the form of checklists.

Development checklists are often in the form of templates. E.g. https://html5boilerplate.com/

Life checklists are in the form of routines and rituals. For example, brush teeth, shower, put on clothes, comb hair every morning. These should actually be sorted out and optimized. I have a basket for "smart casual" clothes, a basket for simply "casual" clothes, a place to dump dirty clothes, and things like toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo go into the exact same location every day. Instead of boxes you tick off, you optimize a route. I'd recommend doing one for all the major things in life - shopping for food, locking up the office, laundry, taking care of the cats, exercise, and so on. If you tend to forget something, label things. Like sometimes the comb is not enough reminder to comb my hair, so I put capital letter "COMB" at eye level.

I teach classes too. I used to keep a checklist of what to teach, but it's easier to have PowerPoint slides instead. This is obvious to most people, but took me months to figure out.

For my checklist apps I keep only two lists: Things to do ASAP ("today") and things to do later/backlog. This is the technique Marc Andreessen recommends.

This! I call this following a "sequence" of tasks, and whenever I get distracted -which happens a lot as I have ADHD-, the phrase "follow the sequence" pops up in my head (sometimes also using alarms on the phone), then I do whatever task/ritual I usually do at that time of the day. I have this list in the Notes app, so whenever I'm lost or overwhelmed on what to do next, I just check the phone. It works to clear my anxiety too.

This is great advice, I have recently had the same epiphany and have been trying to change my checklists and todo lists into habits. To help me do this I have been using the app habitica it tries to gamify todo lists to help you build habits, so far it hasn't helped much because im lazy and don't use it enough.

Any advice on building habits / routines?

One of my friends came up with an excellent tactile checklist for his mornings. He had the entries all on a clipboard, and he used binder clips next to each of them. When he completed something, he would flip the binder clip over. Keep the board next to your bed at night, go down the list in the morning.

I made http://pcbchecklist.com

For electronics there are a lot of small things which should be considered in each design. The must-haves are covered by standards and regulation, but there are many many other considerations which makes life easier or catches errors: checklists are an obvious choice.

So to make it easy for myself I bought http://pcbchecklist.com

It is mostly focused on being comprehensive, but every now and then I have some free time to expand on it.

Love it! Glad you listed the various sources as well. I had been looking for something similar a few years back when I was writing about this topic, but it was pretty scattered. Seems like a good idea to have it all in one place (esp with the community contribution possible)

Thanks. The idea started since my co-workers each had their own private lists and it sure worked, but I figured that it would be much easier if I could just go to one website and have one solid list.

A bit challenge, I think, is that the current list is overwhelmingly big and it would really benefit from being more digestible/navigable. But there is only so much time in the world...

This is an excellent list. I've recently graduated with an EEE and have been trying to learn PCB design, so thank you for posting this! It's hard to keep to best practice design if you don't know what best practice is...

Thank you! I'm trying to find reasons/explanations behind as many items as possible in order to give more context. In general I'm striving for the list to help informed design, rather than just checking off items :)

If you find something which is unclear or could be better, then please tell.

In personal life, I find checklist useful to:

* not forget small tasks that if piled up, eventually become too big or annoying to tackle (daily budget update, email zero-inbox, browser bookmarks cleanup). I group such repeating tasks in daily routines (morning routine, evening routine) or periodical reviews (weekly, monthly etc.)

* keep up the habits (flossing, weighing myself)

* keep up with events rare enough to forget some pieces of it (weedings - tie a tie, give the shirt to the laundry)

Similarly, in software development. I've realized recently that things get less cluttered if you have a process (a checklist, basically) with steps to cover in particular activities.

Examples:

* work shutdown routine (put a work log to Jira, reply all remaining emails, git push everything).

* Definition of Done (DoD): code delivered, tests written, docs updated, etc. That is useful if you (or your team) want up-to-date README but keep forgetting to update it.

* topics to cover on project kick-off, here's mine if anyone's interested: http://bartoszkrajka.com/2018/12/28/kick-off-dev-related-top...

Much like @muzani below, I've tried to apply checklists at much as possible after reading The Checklist Manifesto. It's a solid book with actionable advice and examples.

For business, I have multiple SOPs, which are all effectively checklists:

* My daily marketing routine, with what to do and links directly to where I need to go.

* Monthly invoicing procedures.

* How to perform my roadmapping service (send this, update that, schedule this, etc.)

* Every README I write for dev projects will include a checklist of deployment procedures and how to update critical things.

I'll also occasionally write down a physical "ToDo" list, which ends up being a checklist that I just go down. This is more for reducing executive function in the mornings, and making sure I don't forget anything.

For my personal life, I don't operate off of a specific checklist day to day. Instead, I have an alarm app with absolutely everything I need to do each day, and when it needs to be done. I also rely on my Google Calendar for reminders.

Ultimately, knowing what to do is important, but knowing when to do it is also important.

I wrote up a checklist for the release procedure of the app I work on at my company. I cannot stress how much it made my life easier.

There were a few (too many) manual steps, like updating websites XYZ with release notes, and using this checklist made it all so much simpler to keep track of what I had done / need to do. I also added direct links, removing much friction.

Other than that I don't really use checklists.

I use this in my suicide prevention work.

10 ways to improve safety: https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/

https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=40697

Wallet, keys, card, coins, hanky, phone, glasses. (my version of "spectacles testicles wallet and watch")

Not a native English speaker here, what is hanky?

Handkerchief

I am also interested in the same. Also, any suggestions for good checklist apps?

Rule of thumb IMO is as simple as possible.

GTasks works fine for me for Android. They upgraded it but I still prefer the older one.

For web, I use plaintext or a plugin for Sublime Text (PlainTasks).

Asana was awesome at one point, but they added too many features and it became cumbersome.

Workflowy is good too but doesn't click with me for some reason.

Would love to hear more of your thoughts on WorkFlowy. I’m a current user but there are some things that are just subconsciously bothering me yet I can’t find better alternatives.

Things 3. Although it's way more than a "checklist app". It champions the Getting Things Done methodology.

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