Google Student Blog: The surprising power of checklists

The surprising power of checklists

June 25, 2015

This is the first in our Life Hacks series, which aims to provide different insights into how to make your life simpler and more enjoyable.
In a world where everyone is multitasking and everything is instant, the potential for inefficiency and mistakes is astronomical. We’re constantly checking email while scrolling through our social media news feeds, all while catching up on the latest season of our favorite TV shows. Consequently, some tasks that we truly mean to do slip from our minds. In recent years, this had started to become a huge problem for me. As a busy college student trying to balance schoolwork, volunteering, and friends, I often found myself saying that aggravating phrase, “Oh man, I forgot.” Maybe you know the feeling. Enter the power of the checklist.

The famed B-17 checklist

Now, if you’re at all like me, you’re probably skeptical. After all, how could a measly checklist really be that helpful? Well, let me provide you with some evidence to back up the hype. In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande writes extensively about (you guessed it!) the incredible difference that a checklist can make. To illustrate his point, he tells the story of the B-17’s first test flight. The year was 1935, and the B-17 plane was unlike any other aircraft that had ever existed. It could fly faster and farther than its contemporaries, and it could also sustain a much larger payload. Truly, it was the most complex and revolutionary aircraft of its day. And that was precisely the problem. On its maiden voyage, the pilot had “forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls,” which caused the plane to crash and a couple members of the crew to lose their lives. In response, the US Army decided to make one simple change. Yep, a checklist. The result? According to Gawande, with the help of a handy checklist, the pilots went on to fly the B-17 “a total of 1.8 million miles without one accident.” Pretty powerful stuff for a checklist. But wait, checklists didn’t just save the day for the Army; they also have saved the lives of numerous hospital patients. In fact, experimental studies have found that checklists cut the rate of death in half and the rate of complications from 11% to 7%.

Pretty convincing, right? We thought so, too. At Google, we use checklists all the time. For instance, when a manager receives a new employee (Noogler) on her team, she is provided with a checklist of different actions she should take to help her Noogler get up to speed with the team. Altogether, the results have been astounding: Nooglers whose managers followed this checklist became fully effective 25% faster than their peers. So, case closed: Checklists work, and they work really well.

While you may not be flying B-17s or operating on patients, you can still use checklists to help improve your life. Save yourself the time and stress. Make a checklist.