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Checklists

My dad, when I was growing up, had a business centered around installing overhead garage doors in Philadelphia.

Doesn’t seem like much, until you consider that Philadelphia consists largely of endless rows of houses each of which has its own garage door.

Our street for example had seventy houses.

You could actually survive, and raise six kids doing this type of work within reasonable proximity to your own home.

I went with Dad on many of these jobs.

He would often forget something and have to run back home.

Or, to the lumber yard,
or the hardware store.

Which would get tedious when he would either leave me to watch things at the job site, or we would have to half-pack up to leave the site and get the missing item.

You can imagine my surprise when I realized that he actually had a checklist.

He just sometimes didn’t use it, or think that he needed it.

A checklist can be a lifesaver.

Consider an airliner.

Did you ever see the pilot walking around the outside of the plane, before take-off?

They’re checking the tires, looking for leaks, dents in the wings, evidence of bird strikes.

Then picture those movie scenes where they’re now in the cockpit preparing for takeoff.

Can you see it?

The pilot with the clipboard, checking off the list with the co-pilot.

Even now—at this late date—with all the tech we have.

They still look at the clipboard and run down the checklist.

That’s because the first rule in piloting is:

Never memorize the checklist!

And, if pilots and astronauts and doctors still utilize these, they must be useful.

And, when I started my own version of the garage door business, the first thing I did was to inventory everything that could possibly be needed for or on the site, to include tools, supplies, materials, ratshits, catshits and batshits—

And, created a checklist.

And, I never memorized it.

And started each workday checking the checklist.

And I rarely had to leave a jobsite to get a missing item.

Written May 25 2026