I love checklists. I adore the boxes, the neatness, the illusion of control. A checklist feels like a warm cup of coffee on a chaotic Monday — it doesn’t fix the madness, but it makes you feel like you’re running it. So when I stumbled upon a No Stupid Questions episode titled “Do checklists make people stupid?” during one of my night runs, I nearly tripped over my existential dread.
Do they?
Am I…?
Surely not. Mine are tabulated. Color-coded. Occasionally, printed.
The truth is, a checklist in its purest form is a humble servant. It keeps you from missing appointments, or launching a campaign without booking the venue. It’s perfect for repeatable tasks or passing instructions to the next unlucky soul on shift duty. A well-written checklist is a love letter to your future forgetful self — one that says, “You’re covered. I already thought this through.”
I once read that for grocery runs, it’s best to shop on a full stomach and with a checklist to avoid overspending.
Which brings me back to when we still had a helper. She’d dictate the list while either Ivan or I wrote it down. One day, she rattled off spices in Bisaya: ahos, luy-a, etc. Later, I checked the list and saw Ivan had written some items twice — once in Bisaya, and once in English. His reason? He didn’t know the Bisaya terms for the English spices I’d mentioned earlier. Now he does. The grocery aisle can be surprisingly educational.
When the helper exited our lives after a series of… plot twists, I took over dictation while Mama wrote. My brother Patrick — a professional heckler disguised as family — would always hover, pretending to reorganize his moral compass. Between Mama’s creative spelling of brands and the occasional hearing hiccup, things got muddled — and that’s when Patrick would deliver running commentary sharp enough to slice cling wrap.
I didn’t just rattle off items; I dictated with precision, mapping the supermarket like a general plotting troop movements: advancing through fresh produce, marching into dry goods in formation, flanking the spice section, sweeping through snacks, gliding past dairy, and staging the final assault at household cleaning, including laundry. No aisle was left unconquered, and no shelf unscanned — and that's how we waged war on our grocery list.
But here’s the thing: I’m not talking about mental lists. I mean, external checklists — printed, laminated, bullet-pointed masterpieces designed to prevent deadly lapses. When your job involves cutting people open or flying them 30,000 feet above ground, “Oops, I forgot” is not a charming anecdote. It’s a lawsuit. Or a eulogy.
The external checklist is a backup brain — one that doesn’t get tired, show off, or skip steps because it’s “done this a hundred times.” Surgeons and pilots don’t use them because they’re slow; they use them because they’re smart enough to plan for human error.
But somewhere along the corporate hallway, the checklist stopped being a tool and was enthroned like a sacred office mug. We’ve all met the Checklist Zealots. They don’t make decisions — they tick boxes. They’re not evaluating outcomes — they’re ensuring the “Received” stamp is in blue ink, preferably aligned with ISO 9001.
I once worked with someone who wouldn’t approve anything unless it was on their “master list.” The catch? The list hadn’t been updated since pagers were still a thing. It’s one thing to be detail-oriented; it’s another to outsource your thinking to stationery.
Some of the most important things I’ve done didn’t have boxes to tick, like listening to a colleague cry in the restroom, spotting a red flag no form was designed to catch, or choosing compassion over compliance. They don’t fit neatly in bullet points, but they still outshine most things that do — not that anyone’s report would notice.
So no, I don’t think checklists make us stupid. But worshipping them? That’s another story.
Still, I’ll keep writing mine. I’ll probably add this column to next week’s:
☑ Write an op-ed about checklists
☑ Question entire personality
☐ Buy detergent
And look — the checklist worked. I’ve written this article.
Still brewing thoughts — no sugarcoating, just stories steeped in truth.
