An article to explain the benefits that a checklist can bring to your life
It is often said that the more you see the quicker you achieve. Whether you are an old-school paper person or a technological smartphone user, one thing is a fact, writing down your tasks is easier to complete them. Some people believe that with a hurried life, it is quicker just to memorize what needs to be done, while others hold the view that when you have a to-do list you manage better your life. But here is a question for you, are you capable to remember at least five things that someone asked for you yesterday?
According to an article in Scientific American, “the memory capacity of a human brain was testified to have equal to 2.5 petabytes of memory capacity.A ‘petabyte’ means 1024 terabytes or a million gigabytes so that the average adult human brain can accumulate the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of memory.” Even though this is a huge capacity, some studies suggest that humans forget approximately 50% of new information within an hour of learning it. And within 24 hours, that number goes up to an average of 70%!So, if you are the type of person that prefers remembering and memorizing all of your tasks during the day, your chances to remember all of them will be up to 30%.Also, humans have an average of 70,000 thoughts per day, which limits their attention to everything around them. Paying attention is usually necessary to create new memories, and people can only pay attention to a small number of things at once.
Moreover, another fact to be considered is that studies show that we are capable to remember 10% of what we hear, 20% of what we read, and 80% of what we see. So even though you don’t open your to-do list often, just the act of writing it and visualizing everything that needs to be done increases your chance to remember it and therefore do it quicker.
This suggests that having somewhere that you can organize your tasks and ideas will improve your memory, as it frees up extra brain capacity, allowing you to realize the task rather than focusing on remembering it, giving extra reduced anxiety. In case it is a shared list, creating and visualizing the tasks also gives you and your team a clear idea of what is a priority, helping you and others to create a structured plan. And simply ticking the items off a checklist keeps you motivated to continue to achieve everything.
In conclusion, visualizing your tasks and to-do lists is a powerful tool for productivity and management, which will make you and your team more effective, will reduce stress and anxiety, giving your mind permission to forget.
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