There’s something very satisfying about a good checklist—right up until you forget to use it and arrive on an overnight trip without your chargers.
Shannon is deep in pre-travel mode, which means checklists are everywhere, and Janine is an enthusiastic fellow traveler. Soon they’re remembering the podcast checklists they once relied on, comparing Apple Notes and Bullet Journals, talking about pilots who run through the same steps every single flight, and finding entirely new uses for plastic sleeves and dry-erase markers.
Of course, even a great checklist only works if you remember it exists. And in a nicely timed demonstration of why external memory can be useful, Shannon ends the episode by confidently saying the podcast phone number wrong.
What We Talk About
- 02:33 — Travel checklists, the importance of chargers, and what happened when Shannon skipped her list on an overnight trip
- 04:42 — Keeping checklists current and Mike’s method of refining his travel list after each trip
- 06:19 — Remembering the things that can’t be packed until morning, plus the growing pre-trip mega checklist
- 08:49 — Checklists beyond travel: Janine’s new bookkeeping system and the podcast’s shared mini operating manual
- 11:31 — Apple Notes, Bullet Journals, and the deep satisfaction of watching checked-off items move to the bottom
- 12:15 — The Checklist Manifesto, pilots who never skip the routine, “clear prop,” and Barry’s occasionally irritating checklist advice
- 14:13 — Fighter pilots, astronauts, The Apollo Murders, and what can happen when every complicated process has its steps written down
- 18:32 — Todoist routines, laundry that isn’t done until it’s put away, resurrecting forgotten checklists, and reusable list hacks that keep things fresh
Key Takeaways
- A checklist can take over when memory gets unreliable under pressure—or when a task happens too infrequently to become automatic.
- Useful checklists aren’t necessarily finished products. Mike keeps revising his travel list based on what he used, didn’t use, and wished he’d brought.
- Repeated checklists can become a kind of operating manual: eventually the process may feel automatic, but the written steps are still there if someone else has to take over.
- There’s a catch to having a great checklist: you still have to remember it exists. Writing it down at least means it can be resurrected when you need it again.
- Sometimes a little novelty or visibility—a different app, a reusable card, a plastic sleeve—is enough to make an old checklist interesting again.
The Bottom Line
Checklists seem to earn their keep most when memory is least dependable: before a trip, during an infrequent bookkeeping task, or when somebody else has to take over a process. They still need updating, they still have to be remembered, and sometimes adding a little novelty is what keeps them alive. And after all that talk about brain muscle memory, Shannon closes by getting the phone number wrong—apparently the right thing does not always come out at the right time.
Want More Like This?
Episode 22: Creating Helpful Habits
Automating mundane tasks, finding ways to remember new habits, and linking actions together into routines—the habit-building side of what checklists are doing here.
Episode 121: Productive Preparation
Travel preparation gets the good-enough treatment, with Janine using Trello to plan packing, Shannon using Post-it notes, and both trying to prepare without letting perfectionism take over.
Episode 196: Building an Anti-Perfectionist Toolkit
A particularly fitting companion to this discussion: useful tools are easy to forget. Shannon and Janine talk about collecting them in one place, revisiting them, tweaking what stops working, and writing things down so they’re there when you need them.
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