I Skipped the Checklist. Then Everything Broke.

Last updated: 2026-10-16

In 2014, a private plane crashed. The NTSB went through that aircraft’s history and found a number I still think about. Of 175 takeoffs, 98% happened without the full pre-flight checklist. The crash came down to a gust lock that was still engaged. That step was written on the checklist. Somebody skilled enough to fly the plane skipped the verification.

Does that sound like a pilot problem? I used to file it that way. Then I ran my own version in North Carolina.

I was there for a 24-hour speaking engagement. Short trip. I’ve traveled plenty. I know the drill. I got to the hotel and my phone charger was gone. My presentation clicker was still at home. Then the slides wouldn’t load. Three failures, stacked, because the trip was short and I trusted the routine. Experience didn’t protect me. It made me casual.

That’s the rule I walked away with. No matter how experienced you are, if you don’t have a checklist, or you don’t follow the one you have, you will forget something.

High-frequency work is where this shows up. You do the thing so often that you stop checking. You assume the gust lock is off. You assume the clicker is in the bag. The failure in that cockpit was a missing verification. Same shape as a missing charger.

The list does the thinking so you don’t have to

Without a checklist, a repeat task stays a problem-solving exercise. You recall the steps. You figure out what’s already done. You make small decisions the whole way through. High cognitive load, for work you already solved last time.

With a checklist, you verify completion. Low cognitive load. The decisions were made on a day when your head was clear.

I notice this most with the GTD Weekly Review. Plenty of people skip it. The review is doable. What stops them is sitting down and figuring out what “the review” even consists of today. That startup friction beats the actual work.

Brooks Duncan, who I work with on this stuff, frames it as a timing problem. The best time to solve a problem is when you’re calm, collected, and focused. The worst time is a crisis state. Tired, emotional, or rushed. A checklist is the calm version of you writing the steps down, so the rushed version of you can execute them. Your crisis self should not be inventing a process.

So name one ritual you skip because it feels hard to start. If the Weekly Review is the one, break it into a short checklist this week, while you still have the energy to think. Next Thursday you only have to check boxes.

Three lists. That’s the whole system.

I used to believe a serious setup meant a checklist for every tiny motion. That dies. You maintain lists instead of doing the work.

Most of the daily friction sits in three places. Checklist those. Leave the one-off micro-tasks alone. That’s the 80/20.

1. Task-specific checklists

These cover work that repeats in roughly the same shape. Podcast recording. Client onboarding. The sequence barely changes, and your memory will still drop a step on a crowded day. Write it once. The next run is execution.

2. Travel and packing checklists

This is the category that failed me in North Carolina. Chargers, clickers, anything you can’t replace once you’re already there. A short trip is when you need the list most, because confidence fills the gaps.

Brooks runs a post-trip pass I treat as part of the list now. After every trip, review what you packed. Pull off anything you brought and never used, so you’re not hauling dead weight. Add anything you wished you’d had. A specific charger cable. Activated charcoal. One deletion, one addition. Do that every time and the list stays lean. Skip it and you end up with a heavy bag and one missing item that actually mattered.

Inside that same travel bucket, I keep a hotel workout. My trainer wrote me a bodyweight sequence, squats and pushups and the rest, before I ever leave. I don’t stand in a random room asking what a workout should be today. I don’t need a gym or a sense of the amenities. I open the list and I train. If hydration or sleep hygiene falls apart on the road for you, put those on a travel health list next to the workout. I’m no doctor, so I’m not handing you a protocol. I just know the open question of “what do I do in this room?” is what used to kill the session.

3. Rituals, review, and planning checklists

Morning routines. Shutdowns. The weekly review. These guard the rest of the week, and they feel optional exactly when you’re depleted. That’s why the steps have to exist before the depleted day arrives.

Pick one of the three this week. If you try to build all of them on a Sunday night, Wednesday will undo it.

Twenty minutes, then stop arguing with yourself

The pushback is always that writing the list takes too long. Run the numbers on one recurring task.

You spend 20 minutes making the checklist. Say it saves you 5 minutes of hunting or second-guessing each time you do the task. Do that task 40 times in a year and you’ve recovered 200 minutes. About 3.5 hours. One sitting, then you collect the rest of the year.

Calculate it on your actual task before you decide the list is overhead. Weekly is roughly that 40. Daily pays you back inside the month.

Before this week ends

Find one high-frequency task you run on autopilot, the kind you assume you can’t botch. While you’re calm, draft a 5-item checklist for it and put it where you’ll open it next time.

Decide which of the three categories it belongs to, and ignore the other two until this list has survived a few real uses. If it’s packing, do the post-trip pass after the next trip: one item off, one item on.

Write it now. The version of you who needs it will be tired, late, or already at the hotel.