- [Matt] There's a solution so simple
to some of the world's most complex problems
that you probably won't believe me when I tell you.
It's what engineers use to build skyscrapers,
surgeons employ to save lives,
and it's what allows pilots to safely fly
an 80 ton piece of metal through the air.
You might also be surprised to discover that
that same solution can be applied
to improve your own productivity,
creativity, and efficiency.
Now, I need you to stay with me here.
It's a checklist.
(calm elevator music) - When you have a situation
where you're dealing with breathtaking
and sometimes suffocating levels of complexity,
you need a system to handle it.
And as it turns out,
checklists are surprisingly simple.
Almost absurdly simple solution.
- [Matt] That's Greg McKeown,
author of Essentialism
and the person who first introduced me
to the power of checklists.
They're so powerful in fact,
that they've managed to solve seemingly impossible problems.
Like putting a man on the moon.
- [Greg] You know, when Buzz Aldrin
is asked all about his experiences up there.
"And what were your thoughts on the moon
and what were your..."
He said, "Well, that wasn't what we were doing.
We had a long list of checklist items
because we were doing something
that'd never been done before.
Something that was more complex
than anything that anyone had done before.
They had so many variables.
We would simplify the whole process
to do the next item on the list.
The next item on the list.
- [Neil Armstrong] And it's on this timeline
that we have all our procedures.
So we obviously have to hold these in place in zero-G.
So we make use of the velcro
and on the table.
- [Greg] And by building that checklist
so carefully and thoughtfully,
they made something,
to that point, impossible, possible.
- [Neil Armstrong] That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
- If there's one person that deserves credit
for bringing to light the significance of checklists,
it's author and surgeon, Atul Gawande.
As Gawande details in his book,
The Checklist Manifesto,
he first started thinking about them
when the world health organization came to his team
and asked them for help with a project
aiming to reduce deaths in surgery.
The solution,
as you might have guessed,
a checklist
- We created a 19 item, two minute,
checklist for surgical teams.
We implemented this checklist
in eight hospitals around the world.
Deliberately in places from rural Tanzania
to the University of Washington in Seattle.
We found that after they adopted it,
the complication rates fell 35%.
It fell in every hospital it went into.
The death rates fell 47%.
This was bigger than a drug.
(audience applauds)
- Now, it's not that I don't think very highly
of the work that I do
but this is not exactly brain surgery.
So it makes sense for people trying to fly airplanes,
perform open heart surgery,
or even land on the moon.
But could it actually apply to people like me and you?
To find out,
I gave my friend Greg McKeown a call.
He's the checklist advocate
that first introduced me to the idea,
to see if he could explain
how it might be able to help me in my own life.
- [Greg] The checklist relieves the mind
of having to try to remember.
The mind is good for so many things,
but it's a bad office.
It's a bad place to try and store
things that you need to remember constantly.
So you remove that cognitive pressure
and you also just carefully select better over time,
those things that really matter most to you
and you start making small incremental progress
on those items.
- [Matt] I'll be honest.
I don't find myself too cognitively overloaded these days.
(laughs)
Joey.
But I was ready to give it a shot.
And as it turns out,
when it comes to creating a checklist,
well, Greg's got a checklist for that.
- [Greg] One, observe your own process.
Literally put a video up.
Like a time lapse of the entire process.
It's a two day process a week.
That process, just video the whole thing.
Record it somehow.
Write out everything as you remember it.
Once you've got a recording of it,
a version of it,
and written out in rough format,
try to do it again using that process yourself.
Where you find that isn't correct,
refine the process until you finally say,
"Yeah, that is how I do it right now."
And then it can be taught to other people.
- So with the help of The Checklist Manifesto
as well as my checklist friend, Greg,
I got started.
And I made a checklist for pretty much everything.
I made one for my editing process.
And one for how I choose which videos to make.
A checklist for when I interview people.
One for when to say yes to commitments.
And another for how I pack for travel.
As I found out,
there could really be a checklist for anything.
- [Greg] I'll give you one example.
It's just listening.
Listening deeply and empathically with my wife.
This is so important.
But if I don't put it on something I just forget to do it.
There's so much else going on.
But if I have it on there
then every day when I go through write my journal,
I have a chance to reflect,
"Oh, have I done that?
If we spent time in that mode?"
So you don't go very long after that without doing it.
The adjustment's quicker.
- So then Becky told Stacy
that she needed to go talk to Courtney
because Laura,
Laura L not Laura R,
is about to go talk to Michael.
And if she talks to Michael,
but this whole thing blows up
and I don't even wanna get involved.
Are you even listening to me?
- Oh my god, no way.
Greg told me to do it.
He's British.
He sounds smart when he talks.
Okay, as you can see,
I went a little bit overboard.
What can I say?
I got excited.
But even experimenting with this for a short period of time,
I've started to see the benefits
of something as simple as a checklist.
As Dr. Gawande says,
"It's really about the things that get forgotten,
overlooked or missed."
And that's definitely something I'm realizing
will help me with travel.
I often wait till the very last minute to pack for travel
and I inevitably forget something.
Whether it's charging my Bluetooth headphones,
adding shows and movies to my iPad,
or even packing my toothbrush.
So in order to create the most effective travel checklist,
I literally packed up all my stuff
as if I were going on a trip.
And while it might seem excessive
to create a checklist for travel,
I think it'll make each trip
just a little bit less stressful.
And I won't constantly
be thinking about all the things that I probably forgot.
And as I started to put together my checklist
for filmmaking,
I started to remember all the times
that I've actually made mistakes.
I've been making videos for over 10 years
and I'm sure I've put well over 10,000 hours
into the process of filmmaking.
And yet, even with all that experience
I still sometimes film in slow motion
when I didn't intend to.
Shit.
Overexpose my footage
and so many more mistakes.
And so a pre-shoot checklist could help me with that.
In my research,
I learned an important part of checklists
are what's called a pause point.
The moments in a process
where you can catch a problem
before there's anything you can do about it.
For pilots,
this is the moment that they push on the throttle.
For surgeons, it's before the first incision.
For filmmakers, it's right before you hit record.
As you go off and create your own checklist,
try to think of ways to include these into your own process.
When it comes to checklists,
Greg likes to have a print out of it.
That way he can actually go through
and physically check each item off the list
and not skip it over accidentally,
defeating the purpose of the checklist altogether.
- [Greg] You know, checklists sound very, again,
little vanilla.
Oh, who wants a checklist?
But they're using it to increase execution,
superb execution, fast execution.
I mean a fighter pilot.
You think a checklist?
We don't need to-
Yes. In those scenarios,
when the stakes are high,
when you want to operate at a high performance level,
you want to make the process as smooth
and effortless as possible
so that you don't make massive mistakes
just because you were thinking of something else.
- So checklists are probably not gonna solve
all your problems in life.
But I have noticed that they've already started
to help my own creative process,
identifying areas where things are repetitive,
slowing me down,
or just getting in the way.
Checklists have also helped me to identify the things
that I should be saying yes to
before I even do them.
And you know what?
If checklists are good enough for brain surgeons,
they're good enough for me.
If you guys wanna take a look at a couple of the checklists
that I made for this video.
Like when to say yes.
And when an idea is worth creating,
go follow me on Instagram.
I'll be sharing those
along with a bunch of new original content
exclusively for IGTV
that expands on the topics that I share here on YouTube.
As Derek Siver says,
"It's either a hell yes or a no.
For me, I wanna make sure
that each thing that I'm saying yes to,
is a hell yes.
I'll leave a link down in the description
so it's easier to get to.