The Checklist

Yesterday, on The Daily Show with John Stewart, his guest was Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of The Checklist Manifesto. This book details how a checklist is useful for many of us, specifically in hospitals. In the interview Gawande explains that though he has seen positive results from asking surgeons to perform a simple checklist before surgeries it is not mandatory, and many don't wish to do one. It may be ego, but there is no shame in the checklist game.

I am no surgeon, but I know I couldn't live my life with out the use of checklists. For five years I was the director of a Theatre program at a high school in Arcadia, and in that time I relied on lists to help me keep track of everything from directing, producing, designing the set, keeping track of the props and costumes, contacting parents, and so forth. Within theatre the checklist is part of the norm. There are lists that are checked before any performance that involves cast members, light cues, props, costumes, and so more. How else can you be sure a performance will run smoothly, without first checking that all the necessary elements are in place? It works wonders for a production, and I don't see how if theatre people can do for a performance, why doctors wouldn't do the same for saving a life. Right? I mean it's like, duh!

Though I learned the importance of the list from my theatre experience and discovered its invaluableness from my time as a solo lonely high school Theatre Arts department director, it now has spread over the rest of my life. I rarely do any major or minor daily production--family trips, house chores, writing projects, fellowship applications--without the all knowing list.

Why? If I don't have a check list everything piles up and the amount of work I have to accomplish feels insurmountable. I begin to worry that I will never get it done, and I quickly run to throw my head under the blankets and sleep it all away. BUT with a check list everything changes. Your work is in a manageable order and you can note your progress. Nothing feels as good as when you've checked something off the list. And there is never any last minute panic about forgetting something because your list tells you, you haven't.

The check-list: not just for theatre geeks and surgeons anymore.