If you have checklists, do you have triggers for using them?

Paul Martin - July 21, 2020

Advice

I’m a huge proponent of checklists.  As the Texas coast may experience some tropical weather later this week, I pulled out mine and made sure I was comfortable with my pre-set trigger for the Level A checks in the list.

Do you use pre-determined triggers for your checklists?

https://paultmartin.com/blog/f/project-setting-triggers-for-your-checklist-tasks

1  

I took a look at your lists – interesting stuff! I’m based in coastal FL so during hurricane season we are always in some state of “getting ready”. I’m also a big fan of The Checklist Manifesto, as I’m guessing many others here are as well.

Your lists look very similar to ours. Generally speaking, our triggers are based on “time out” from the storm; however, we do have different timelines depending on whether we are evacuating or staying put – a decision that’s often made as we get closer to landfall. Because of the panic that happens in our area during the days leading up to a hurricane, we have the “double check everything and go to the store” section about a week in advance. Does this mean that sometimes we refill our stock and end up without a storm? Definitely. Would I rather have that than wait a bit longer for a better forecast, risking that we are running low on _______ and miss out? Absolutely.