D. Mark Jackson explains in a post to his Lean Law blawg how he modified his GTD-based task lists after reading The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.[1] Atul Gawande, the author of that book, is a surgeon whose surgical checklists were inspired by aviation checklists. One common feature of aviation checklists is that they explain what "complete" means. Most people, Mr. Jackson points out, write out a brief description of the task with a little box to tick when they've completed it, but don't indicate what is required for that box to deserve the tick.
Mr. Jackson gives the example of his GTD Weekly Review checklist. An important element of the GTD Weekly Review is to process all of your "inboxes." An in-box can be anything where you store information and items that you need to act on. Like Mr. Jackson, one item on my Weekly Review check list is "wallet." The difference between Mr. Jackson's list and mine, however, is that whereas mine just has the work "wallet" with a checkbox, his includes the words "no paper/items." [2]
I choose to focus on this simple example because it so clearly shows the different approach to checklists. While emptying your wallet of collected odds and ends is a simple enough process to not require much explanation, the habit of defining a do-to item, no matter how simple, by the desired result, is a great habit to get into. Too many lawyers try to represent rather complex, multi-step work packages in a simple phrase on a checklist:
"Write memo in op in Smith matter."
"Research enforcement of default judgments in Taiwan."
Putting aside the usefulness of breaking such "projects"[3] down into their next actions, taking the time to think about and record how you will know when the task is complete is the bare minimum of planning, but is often overlooked. We tend to take for granted that we (will) know. Worse we often assume that we understand the tasks delegated to us--or fear that we'll look stupid if we ask, so we act now and ask for forgiveness later. Even worse, we assume that delegatees know what we expect when we assign tasks to them.
I've read many articles recently that discuss the importance of getting attorneys to break down the work they do to better understand and optimize the legal processes. But an important part of this process of decomposition should be to clearly define what "done" means for each step, as well as the final deliverable.
[1] D. Mark Jackson, Using Aviation Checklists To Improve Your Work, Lean Law, March 14, 2010, http://leanlaw.net/2010/05/14/using-aviation-checklists-to-improve-your-work/ (last visited May 17, 2010); see also, Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto (2009) ; David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stree-Free Productivity (2002).
[2] Image of D. Mark Jackson's Weekly Review checklist: http://leanlaw.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Weekly-Review.png.
[3] Here I am using "projects" in the GTD sense of "any desired result that requires more than one action step." See Allen, supra note 1, at 37.
Become a Fan of LPM
