Checklists. The simple, often forgotten tool relegated to pilots and nuclear power plant operators.
A checklist is just what it sounds like, a list of things you check off. It serves as a memory aid for repetitive yet important tasks. Like preparing a commercial airliner for take-off. Or packing for a road trip.
You would be amazed, actually you wouldn't because you've all been there, at how many people forget to pack simple things. This is why hotel "gift" shops exist. No one wants to spend $5 on a tiny tube of toothpaste to bring home for their loved ones. You buy it because it's midnight, you've been travelling all day and you just realized you didn't pack any toothpaste.
Twice I have forgotten to pack, and subsequently had to buy, underwear. Something that is much easier to do in downtown Toronto than in cottage country.
Sure, we try to make a packing list. It is a scrap of paper that sits on the kitchen island and we write things on it as they occur to us. The Monkey's potty seat is never on that list (replacement courtesy of WalMart). Underwear is never on that list (thanks Winners!). Why? Because we use them so often we forget they exist. Our day-to-day lives are filled with repetition that fades from our conscious mind.
This time I was going to do it better. 13 hours of travel, 4 days in rural Quebec, 2 small children. I was going to do this right.
I created a spreadsheet and put it on our family cloud site so both my partner and I could edit it. It was broken down into categories for each person. It had a column for which bag things were going to be packed in. It was a thing of organizational beauty.
It started off well. I was confident. We had this. (You see where this is going...)
Then we left. I couldn't shake this nagging suspicion that we forgot something. Halfway there, I learn what it is. Monty, Baby Bear's favourite sleep toy. Okay, no problem. We can make do, "look here's your elephant!".
Then we stop for dinner. No bibs. No problem, my dutiful sister stuffs the plastic St. Hubert bibs in her purse.
Then we arrive, settle in, get the kids asleep. Open up the bag of food. No flask of scotch. It's going to be a long weekend.
Of the 70 items on the checklist, there were issues with 7 of them. That's 10%!
So what went wrong?
- We stopped checking stuff off the list. It was working well until I had to pack up the laptop and ran out of juice on my smartphone. Sometimes nothing beats a good ol' clipboard and pen.
- I didn't verify the quantity of items, just that they were there. Thus, I only packed 4 pairs of underwear instead of 8. Luckily there was a washing machine.
- We underestimated the number of pajamas Monkey would need for the trip. 2 pairs for 5 nights, not sufficient for a 3 year old.
Sometimes pilots will look at the checklist and verify the correct setting, EVEN IF IT IS WRONG. They get so used to seeing the switch "on" that when it is "off" they actually see it a different position then it physically is. I swore I saw Monty in the backseat of the car when we left.
Pilots who were interrupted mid-checklist by air traffic control or other aircraft and didn't have a physical way to mark off where they left off were more likely to forget where they had were. Thus, the last three items on the kitchen packing list were forgotten.
The checklist is only a good tool if it is well designed. Some checklists had too much detail or were not ordered in a way that made them easy and efficient to use. Not having enough PJs for the Monkey wasn't because we didn't follow the checklist, it was because we had the wrong number on the list.
So what did I learn from this?
Save the list as a template and adjust on a per trip basis. Keep improving it.
Print it out. Because at the end of the day, there is no more powerful tool than a checkmark.
Bon Voyage!
