How checklists can make your job easier

As a tech­ni­cal writer who relies on check­lists for aspects of my work, I just had to read a book called The Check­list Manifesto.

Atul Gawande, the author of the book and a sur­geon and a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Med­ical School, argues that check­lists are essen­tial in all facets of society—from deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty health care, to design­ing and con­struct­ing build­ings, to research­ing what invest­ments to buy, to assist­ing pilots to han­dle emer­gen­cies, such as engine fail­ures. Gawande says the rea­son that mis­takes occur is due to the vol­ume of infor­ma­tion and increased com­plex­i­ty in so many aspects of soci­ety. Despite the addi­tion­al train­ing that is required in so many jobs and an abun­dance of tech­nol­o­gy, we still often fail to deliv­er the intend­ed results.

Check­lists can mit­i­gate some of these mis­takes. One exam­ple he includes is how a sim­ple check­list can help over­whelmed med­ical pro­fes­sion­als go over some of the basics before oper­at­ing on patients. Before surgery, doc­tors are sup­posed to per­form the following:

1. Wash their hands with soap.
2. Clean the patien­t’s skin with an antiseptic. 
3. Put ster­ile drapes over the entire patient.
4. Wear a mask, hat and ster­ile gown.
5. Put a ster­ile dress­ing over the inser­tion site of the “cen­tral line,” a catheter placed in a large vein in the neck, chest, groin, or arm. 

Gawande acknowl­edges these steps are con­sid­ered “no-brain­ers.” But in one study, doc­tors for­got to per­form at least one of pre­vi­ous steps more than 30 per­cent of the time.

I think check­lists can be invalu­able for cer­tain aspects of tech­ni­cal writ­ing. In my cur­rent con­tract, cre­at­ing a check­list helps me iden­ti­fy and fix the com­mon for­mat­ting areas in more than 40 local­ized doc­u­ments. Are the trans­lat­ed notes and warn­ings in a doc­u­ment dis­play­ing prop­er­ly? Are the local­ized cross-ref­er­ences appear­ing as intend­ed? Are the French screen cap­tures dis­play­ing prop­er­ly? Each local­ized doc­u­ment, which can run from 150 to 1,000 pages, may con­tain a hand­ful of prob­lems that need to be fixed. In short, the hum­ble check­list helps me fix the prob­lems before I send it for an inter­nal review.

Yet, despite the use­ful­ness of check­lists, Gawande notes that peo­ple may be reluc­tant to use them. He writes:

“We don’t like check­lists. They can be painstak­ing. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere lazi­ness. There’s some­thing deep­er, more vis­cer­al going on when peo­ple walk away not only from sav­ing lives but from mak­ing mon­ey. It some­how feels beneath us to use a check­list, an embar­rass­ment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the tru­ly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle sit­u­a­tions of high stakes and com­plex­i­ty. The tru­ly great are dar­ing. They impro­vise. They do not have pro­to­cols and check­lists. Maybe our idea of hero­ism needs updating.”

Gawande’s quote res­onat­ed with me because I have occa­sion­al­ly come across writ­ers who are reluc­tant to use them. Maybe they con­sid­er the check­list to be too sim­ple? Per­haps they feel it’s an affront to their knowl­edge? Oth­ers prob­a­bly don’t want to go to the effort of cre­at­ing or fol­low­ing one. What­ev­er the rea­son, I feel that check­lists can be indis­pens­able when you have a large vol­ume of work that con­tains spe­cif­ic tasks that needs to checked.