Starting a business has never been easier, but it happens that entrepreneurs lose direction and forget where they were headed. They fail to establish a process of tracking the progress they’ve made to help them bring more informed and data-driven decisions for the future.

That’s where people start appreciating the value of checklists. Checklists help you get all your tasks completed on time and allow you to stay on track with all your projects and deadlines. Let’s take a look at why and how to use checklists to boost productivity and prevent mistakes.

1.  No Need to Try to Remember

If you’re using checklists for processes you don’t often do, then they will show their real power. For example, when you need to conduct an inspection every few months, it’s difficult to remember all the things that must be inspected. By creating a custom checklist, you won’t need to rely on your memory.

Organizations that waste effort are not productive. By creating reusable checklists, they won’t need to figure out every single step to complete a task they don’t often do.

2. Keep Track of Several Concurrent Tasks

Sometimes you need to perform several inspections at once, such as when several machines in your facility need to be regularly inspected. With a checklist for each machine, you will be able to keep track of all of them and know which machine needs maintenance or part replacements.

3. Know Where You are in the Process

Checklists are quite useful for short-term inspections and audits, but what about tasks that will take place in a week or a month? Well, use your checklist as a reminder of where you are in the entire process. If an inspection requires several steps as well as time between each step, then checklists are the tool you need to complete them successfully and not get lost in the process.

4. Handing Off a Task to Someone Else

Once you’ve created a checklist, listed all the steps, and done the thinking, you can hand the task to someone else. With a clear list of steps, the designated staff member can do the job properly.

5. Quality Check

It’s imperative to have frequent “checks and balances” in business, regardless of what you are doing. Upon “completing” a task or project, one of the most important things to do is go over the steps to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

We can memorize all the steps in a process, but we’re also human and can easily get distracted. Just one tiny mistake can make us miss a critical step, which may eventually grow into a bigger problem. This is especially important for routine safety inspections that concern the health and safety of your staff.

Takeaway

At times, we are overwhelmed with tasks. To reduce the stress and get more things done faster, start using checklists. They can help you learn, plan, get organized, and be more productive. The Checker offers inspection books as well as cloud-based software for creating custom checklists for your audits and inspections.