Life Checklist Quotes

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition. Your qualifications are not your life.

Live. How many of us need to be reminded that living has nothing to do with trying to be as good as someone else, or trying to fit into some category, or filling in the blanks on some stupid checklist. That it has nothing to do with punishing yourself for past mistakes.

One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.

Life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement.

. . . then life began, and since then we remember each dumpster, abandoned house, and foot-chase by retail security. At night, after running around, plotting and scheming, our checklist items all crossed out, we paused to think — 'What to do tomorrow?' and the answer was always, 'As we please . . .

The three habits most important to your Second Brain include: Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.

When in doubt, always compliment a woman's eyeliner application.

Devil’s advocate reviews. Premortems. Conversations with a skeptical discussion partner. A cognitive checklist that reminds us of our biggest biases and our past mistakes.

So given a Time-Turner, I'd tell my 21 self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or archievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life.

And then, suddenly, calm: we reach Mach 25, orbital speed, the engines wind down, and I notice little motes of dust floating lazily upward. Upward. Experimentally, I let go of my checklist for a few seconds and watch it hover, then drift off serenely, instead of thumping to the ground. I feel like a little kid, like a sorcerer, like the luckiest person alive. I am in space, weightless, and getting here only took 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Give or take a few thousand days of training.

I let go of my checklist for a few seconds and watch it hover, then drift off serenely, instead of thumping to the ground. I feel like a little kid, like a sorcerer, like the luckiest person alive. I am in space, weightless, and getting here only took 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Give or take a few thousand days of training.

1. Success is a choice. -Rick Pitino 2. Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well. -Warren Lester 3. I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment; it takes place every day. -Albert Camus 4. If you're not fired up with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm. -Vince Lombardi 5. There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. -Douglas MacArthur 6. Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift, which is why they call it the present. -Bill Keane 7. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. -Thomas Edison 8. When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on. -Franklin D. Roosevelt 9. The best way to predict your future is to create it. -Author unknown 10. I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says, "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest." I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have. -Harry S Truman 11. Triumph? Try Umph! -Author unknown 12. You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation. -Roger Maris 13. If you don't have enough pride, you're going to get your butt beat every play. -Gale Sayers 14. My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces. -Wilma Rudolph 15. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. -Margaret Thatcher

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHECKLIST If we want our kids to have a shot at making it in the world as eighteen-year-olds, without the umbilical cord of the cell phone being their go-to solution in all manner of things, they’re going to need a set of basic life skills. Based upon my observations as dean, and the advice of parents and educators around the country, here are some examples of practical things they’ll need to know how to do before they go to college—and here are the crutches that are currently hindering them from standing up on their own two feet: 1. An eighteen-year-old must be able to talk to strangers—faculty, deans, advisers, landlords, store clerks, human resource managers, coworkers, bank tellers, health care providers, bus drivers, mechanics—in the real world.

You act like life is fulfilling a checklist. ‘I need to get a good wife or husband, then I get a good car, then I get a good house, then I get a promotion, then I get a better car and a better house and I make a name for myself and then…’ ” He rattled off more accomplishments that fulfill the American Dream. “But this plan will never materialize perfectly. And even if it does, then what? You don’t settle, you add more items to the checklist. It is the nature of desire to get one thing and immediately want the next thing, and this cycle of accomplishment and acquisitions won’t necessarily make you happy—if you have ten pairs of shoes you want eleven pairs.

...when somebody says, “I regret nothing,” it’s like you’re willfully not confronting your life. You’re leaving your life unexamined. And I think there’s something in our society that says, Yeah, don’t examine it. Be heedless. Here’s a checklist. Occupy your time and be productive. I mean, what does it say about us that we regret nothing?

I nodded. It was his checklist. Every time we were together we went through this. He ran down his list of people, events, even actual objects that were in my life.

I’m a great believer in solving hard problems by using a checklist. You need to get all the likely and unlikely answers before you; otherwise it’s easy to miss something important.

It is a quality of life to be cultivated that goes deeper than a checklist. Thus "discernment does not change the challenges we face; it changes our ability to face them.

Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.

Telltale Signs That You Grew Up as a “Little Adult” It’s often so difficult for adult daughters to step back and see how they were put into the adult helper role. To help you recognize if this dynamic echoes your experience, I’ve created a pair of checklists to help you identify how mothering your mother shaped and influenced a significant part of your life. When you were a child did you: • Believe that your most important job in life was to solve your mother’s problems or ease her pain—no matter what the cost to you? • Ignore your own feelings and pay attention only to what she wanted and how she felt? • Protect her from the consequences of her behavior? • Lie or cover up for her? • Defend her when anyone said anything bad about her? • Think that your good feelings about yourself depended on her approval? • Have to keep her behavior secret from your friends? As an adult, do these statements ring true for you: • I will do anything to avoid upsetting my mother, and the other adults in my life. • I can’t stand it if I feel I’ve let anyone down. • I am a perfectionist, and I blame myself for everything that goes wrong. • I’m the only person I can really count on. I have to do things myself. • People like me not for myself but for what I can do for them. • I have to be strong all the time. If I need anything or ask for help, it means I’m weak. • I should be able to solve every problem. • When everyone else is taken care of, I can finally have what I want. • I feel angry, unappreciated, and used much of the time, but I push these feelings deep inside myself.

You can’t delegate thinking,” de Crespigny told me. “Computers fail, checklists fail, everything can fail. But people can’t. We have to make decisions, and that includes deciding what deserves our attention. The key is forcing yourself to think. As long as you’re thinking, you’re halfway home.

Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

do want to write a good story. But I no longer trust the judgements of my age. The critic now assesses the writer’s life as much as her work. The judges award prizes according to a checklist of criteria created by corporations and bureaucrats. And we writers and artists acquiesce, fearful of a word that might be misconstrued or an image that might cause offence. I read many of the books nominated for the globalised book prizes; so many of them priggish and scolding, or contrite and chastened. I feel the same way about those films feted at global festivals and award ceremonies. It’s not even that it is dead art: it’s worse, it’s safe art. Most of them don’t even have the dignity of real decay and desiccation: like the puritan elect, they want to take their piety into the next world. Their books and their films don’t even have the power to raise a good stench. The safe is always antiseptic.

I can’t put a number on what I need babe..The perfect man doesn’t just come out of a catalog. I can’t just request him with a checklist and pay for him at the checkout line. Things don’t just happen like that, at least not in my world. I want a real father for my daughter, not just some sperm donor that has never seen her. I want a man in my life to teach my daughter to ride a bicycle, to be cleaning that shot gun on her first date, to be her crying shoulder when she has a bad breakup. I need that man in my life and no amount of money can bring him to me” Truthfully

HOW TO KNOW IF SOMEONE CAN BE TRUSTED Use this expanded checklist to audit your relationship with regard to your partner toward you and you toward him or her. Show this list and your responses to it to your partner. Ask him or her to use the same list regarding you. If you or your partner are not truly described by this list of positive qualities, discuss what action you can take to change things for the better. MY PARTNER   Shows integrity and lives in accord with standards of fairness and honesty in all his or her dealings. (There is a connection between integrity and trust in the Webster’s Dictionary definition: “Trust is the assured reliance on another’s integrity.”)   May operate on the basis of self-interest but never at my expense or the expense of others.   Will not retaliate, use the silent treatment, resort to violence, or hold a grudge.   Predictably shows me the five A’s.   Supports me when I need him or her. Keeps agreements. Remains faithful.   Does not lie or have a secret life. Genuinely cares about me.   Stands by me and up for me.   Is what he or she appears to be; wants to appear just as he or she is, no matter if at times that is unflattering.

Speaking truth to bullshit and practicing civility start with knowing ourselves and knowing the behaviors and issues that both push into our own BS or get in the way of being civil. If we go back to BRAVING and our trust checklist, these situations require a keen eye on: 1. Boundaries. What’s okay in a discussion and what’s not? How do you set a boundary when you realize you’re knee-deep in BS? 2. Reliability. Bullshitting is the abandonment of reliability. It’s hard to trust or be trusted when we BS too often. 3. Accountability. How do we hold ourself and others accountable for less BS and more honest debate? Less off-loading of emotion and more civility? 4. Vault. Civility honors confidentiality. BS ignores truth and opens the door to violations of confidentiality. 5. Integrity. How do we stay in our integrity when confronted with BS, and how do we stop in the midst of our own emotional moment to say, “You know what, I’m not sure this conversation is productive” or “I need to learn more about this issue”? 6. Nonjudgment. How do we stay out of judgment toward ourselves when the right thing to do is say, “I actually don’t know much about this. Tell me what you know and why it’s important to you.” How do we not go into “winner/loser” mode and instead see an opportunity for connection when someone says to us, “I don’t know anything about that issue”? 7. Generosity. What’s the most generous assumption we can make about the people around us? What boundaries have to be in place for us to be kinder and more tolerant? I know that the practice of speaking truth to bullshit while being civil feels like a paradox, but both are profoundly important parts of true belonging. Carl Jung wrote, “Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.” We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don’t reflect our fullness. Yet when we don’t risk standing on our own and speaking out, when the options laid before us force us into the very categories we resist, we perpetuate our own disconnection and loneliness. When we are willing to risk venturing into the wilderness, and even becoming our own wilderness, we feel the deepest connection to our true self and to what matters the most.

1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself. 2. You ask yourself, “Am I too sensitive?” a dozen times a day. 3. You often feel confused and even crazy at work. 4. You’re always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend, boss. 5. You wonder frequently if you are a “good enough” girlfriend/wife/employee/friend/daughter. 6. You can’t understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren’t happier. 7. You buy clothes for yourself, furnishings for your apartment, or other personal purchases with your partner in mind, thinking about what he would like instead of what would make you feel great. 8. You frequently make excuses for your partner’s behavior to friends and family. 9. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don’t have to explain or make excuses. 10. You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself. 11. You start lying to avoid the put-downs and reality twists. 12. You have trouble making simple decisions. 13. You think twice before bringing up certain seemingly innocent topics of conversation. 14. Before your partner comes home, you run through a checklist in your head to anticipate anything you might have done wrong that day. 15. You have the sense that you used to be a very different person—more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed. 16. You start speaking to your husband through his secretary so you don’t have to tell him things you’re afraid might upset him. 17. You feel as though you can’t do anything right. 18. Your kids begin trying to protect you from your partner. 19. You find yourself furious with people you’ve always gotten along with before. 20. You feel hopeless and joyless.

It was a weird thing. Before the divorce, my mom had been kind of strict, the triplets constantly wrecking shit as she sternly tried to wrangle them. She had no patience for people who might complicate her life or create more work for her, was always rolling her eyes at how stupid everyone else was. She made checklists that no one else ever checked. She frowned a lot. I was slightly afraid of her, even though I knew that she loved me. And though I knew the divorce had messed her up, it had also seemed to relax her, like the bad thing had finally happened and she didn't have to keep waiting for it. She chilled out. The triplets, if they burned down the Dairy Queen, well, that was someone else's problem. If I invited some strange boy into our house and made out with him, who was she to intervene? We were eating pizza on a weekday. She was the coolest mom in Coalfield.

But what might a woman say about church as she? What might a woman say about the church as body and bride? Perhaps she would speak of the way a regular body moves through the world—always changing, never perfect—capable of nurturing life, not simply through the womb, but through hands, feet, eyes, voice, and brain. Every part is sacred. Every part has a function. Perhaps she would speak of impossible expectations and all the time she’s wasted trying to contort herself into the shape of those amorphous silhouettes that flit from magazines and billboards into her mind. Or of this screwed-up notion of purity as a status, as something awarded by men with tests and checklists and the power to give it and take it away. Perhaps she would speak of the surprise of seeing herself—flaws and all—in the mirror on her wedding day. Or of the reality that with new life comes swollen breasts, dry heaves, dirty diapers, snotty noses, late-night arguments, and a whole army of new dangers and fears she never even considered before because life-giving isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds, but it’s a thousand times more beautiful. Perhaps she would talk about being underestimated, about surprising people and surprising herself. Or about how there are moments when her own strength startles her, and moments when her weakness—her forgetfulness, her fear, her exhaustion—unnerve her. Maybe she would tell of the time, in the mountains with bare feet on the ground, she stood tall and wise and felt every cell in her body smile in assent as she inhaled and exhaled and in one loud second realized, I’m alive! I’m enfleshed! only to forget it the next. Or maybe she would explain how none of the categories created for her sum her up or capture her essence.

Things are so relaxed and uneventful that he thinks to himself in passing, “It is times like these that Murphy strikes.” The PJ is thinking about Murphy’s Law: “If anything can go wrong it will.” Murphy’s Law is particularly notorious for rearing its ugly head during complex military operations. Seconds later, Dan’s thoughts of Murphy prove prophetic. Even though he is wearing a noise-canceling headset, Sergeant Houghton hears a loud pop. He is a trained aircrew member and the unusual noise sets off internal alarm bells in his head. He looks around; the rest of the passengers remain oblivious, but Sergeant Houghton notices flight engineers moving around, nervously referring to their checklists. And then he hears the ominous sound of an engine winding down and losing power. He flips up his night vision goggles and mentally takes stock of his situation. Word quickly circulates around the cabin—hold on!

Define Your Options When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don’t concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you’ve recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point: --Giving the employee more time --Shifting the employee’s responsibilities to simpler jobs --Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task --Having another employee work with the individual --Firing the employee Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you’re less likely to end up making a choice. Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you’re currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how to have more social contact in her life. Note: If the word best is causing you to jump into perfectionism/frozen mode, write any three to six options.

I truly don’t understand why at every Q and A, someone always asks, “Do you have a routine?” or “Do you write every morning?” Why those questions remain interesting, I really have no idea. But since no one’s putting a gun to their head to ask them, they must compel. They’re probably necessary on a symbolic level more than a literal one, as people cobble together an imagination of what a life devoted to “making” might be like. [I think people want a path to follow. They want a checklist so they can say, “Alright cool, so if I get up at six and I write for this long and I watch this film and I do that…”] It’s weird, because I might have wanted that, too. I used to dance in New York. My Lower East Side days. Modern dance, or whatever. One thing I learned as a dancer was that people learn combinations different ways. Some people, if they get the right side, they can also get the left side right off the top of their head. Some people need to be taught both right and left. Some people count, some people never count, you know? I noticed then that, for me, it was really watching the whole person dancing, trying to take in the whole combination at once, that helped me learn it. I think I’m the same way as a reader—I like to take in the whole book, not getting too specific about how they did it, but ride the bigger example. I mean, at the end of the day, the answer to the question “How did you do it?” is right there, on the page. They’re showing you how they did it, by doing it. Maybe it’s different with art, when you don’t know if someone had all their sculptures knitted or welded by elves somewhere, but with writing, the answer to the question “How do you write a book like this?” is usually, “Like this” [points to book].

We may not recognize how situations within our own lives are similar to what happens within an airplane cockpit. But think, for a moment, about the pressures you face each day. If you are in a meeting and the CEO suddenly asks you for an opinion, your mind is likely to snap from passive listening to active involvement—and if you’re not careful, a cognitive tunnel might prompt you to say something you regret. If you are juggling multiple conversations and tasks at once and an important email arrives, reactive thinking can cause you to type a reply before you’ve really thought out what you want to say. So what’s the solution? If you want to do a better job of paying attention to what really matters, of not getting overwhelmed and distracted by the constant flow of emails and conversations and interruptions that are part of every day, of knowing where to focus and what to ignore, get into the habit of telling yourself stories. Narrate your life as it’s occurring, and then when your boss suddenly asks a question or an urgent note arrives and you have only minutes to reply, the spotlight inside your head will be ready to shine the right way. To become genuinely productive, we must take control of our attention; we must build mental models that put us firmly in charge. When you’re driving to work, force yourself to envision your day. While you’re sitting in a meeting or at lunch, describe to yourself what you’re seeing and what it means. Find other people to hear your theories and challenge them. Get in a pattern of forcing yourself to anticipate what’s next. If you are a parent, anticipate what your children will say at the dinner table. Then you’ll notice what goes unmentioned or if there’s a stray comment that you should see as a warning sign. “You can’t delegate thinking,” de Crespigny told me. “Computers fail, checklists fail, everything can fail. But people can’t. We have to make decisions, and that includes deciding what deserves our attention. The key is forcing yourself to think. As long as you’re thinking, you’re halfway home.

pinpoint these skills, it is important for you to identify at least twenty accomplishments from all times of your life: school, work (from your early career to the present), volunteer activities, hobbies, etc.

3. Follow the 24-hour rule. Within one day of receiving any new communication requiring action-mail, e-mail, phone calls, requests, and so on-take at least one step toward responding to it. Better yet, do one thing on each new task the minute you learn of it. This will keep dreaded tasks from looming larger than life.

Final checklist To significantly increase the quantity and quality of ideas that you generate, reading this book isn’t enough. You need to make principles from this book a part of your own habits. Below you will find the 7 most fundamental principles of creating successful business ideas. Write them down on a sheet of paper and hang it near the desk where you work or near your bed. Over the next 3 weeks, think for at least 15-30 minutes per day about ideas using these principles. These can be ideas that will help you improve your business, achieve your dreams or make your life more interesting. I promise you that by the end of these 3 weeks you will notice a significant jump in your creative performance. 1. Collect raw materials. Ideas are combinations or modifications of other ideas. The more you know the ideas of other people and the more life experiences you expose yourself to, the more creative raw materials you have. The more creative raw materials you have, the more combinations your subconscious mind will be able to make and the more likely you are to create new valuable and interesting ideas. 2. Set the task for the subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a powerful thinking mechanism, but it remains idle if you haven’t given it a task. Once you begin giving your subconscious questions to think about regularly, you will notice how the quantity and quality of your ideas will skyrocket. 3. Separate analyzing and generating ideas. When you are analyzing ideas, your analytical brain blocks your superfast creative brain from thinking. To let the creative brain do its work, separate the processes of analyzing and generating ideas. 4. Think and rest. The most effective thinking algorithm is the following: think about a problem for an extensive period of time, forget about the problem and rest, occasionally think about the problem for few minutes and forget about it again. The incubation period when you don’t think about the problem is essential for your subconscious mind to process millions of thoughts and combinations of ideas, however to give it a task you need to think for some time about the problem consciously. 5. Generate many ideas. In creative thinking, quantity equals quality. You can’t generate one great idea. However, you can generate many ideas and select one or several great ideas out of them. 6. Have fun. Your subconscious mind thinks most effectively when you have fun. When you are serious, you are very unlikely to create really creative and valuable ideas. 7. Believe and desire. Believe that you will generate great ideas and have a burning desire to generate them. If you do, great ideas will come to you in abundance and sooner or later the problem will be solved. Once you have made these 7 principles a part of your own creative habits, glance through the book again and practice other principles and techniques. In a year’s time of practicing generating ideas regularly, you will become a world-class creative thinker. The skill of creating ideas will make your business successful and your life an adventure. I wish you good luck in creating successful ideas and in achieving all your dreams in business.

NUTRITARIAN DAILY CHECKLIST (Make copies of this chart and check off each point each day.)   Eat a large salad as the main dish for at least one meal.  Eat at least a half cup, but preferably closer to 1 cup, of beans.  Eat one large (double-size) serving of steamed green vegetables.  Eat at least 1 ounce of nuts and seeds if you’re female and at least 1.5 ounces of nuts and seeds if you’re male. Half of them should be walnuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds, flaxseeds, or sesame seeds.  Eat some cooked mushrooms and raw and cooked onions.  Eat at least three fresh fruits.

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills, he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important.

A nerdy way to say this: the Get-Happy Checklist is much easier than the Get-Rich Checklist.

Neurodivergent Checklist Time Blindness: Many neurodivergent people have trouble properly perceiving time as it passes. It either goes by too quickly or slowly. The perception of time depends on the level of stimulation the neurodivergent person is dealing with. It also can vary depending on what you’re focused on. If you’ve ever found yourself unable to account for time, you may be neurodivergent. Executive Dysfunction: This is what you experience when you want to accomplish a task, but despite how hard you try, you cannot see it through. Executive dysfunction happens for various reasons, depending on the type of neurodivergence in question. Still, the point is that this is a common occurrence in neurodivergent people. Task Multiplication: What is task multiplication? It happens when you set off to accomplish one thing but have to do a million other things, even though that wasn’t your original plan. For instance, you may want to sit down to finish some writing, only to notice water on the floor. You get up to grab a mop, and on the way, you notice the laundry you were supposed to drop off at the dry cleaners. Stooping to pick up the bag, you find yourself at eye level with your journal and remember you were supposed to make an entry the previous day, so you’re going to do that now. On and on it goes. Inconsistent Sleep Habits: This depends on what sort of neurodivergence you’re dealing with and if you’ve got comorbid disorders. Most importantly, neurodivergent people sleep more or less than “regular” people. You may also notice that your sleep habits fluctuate a lot. Sometimes you may sleep for eight hours at a stretch for a week, only to suddenly start running on just three hours of sleep. Emotional Dysregulation: With many neurodivergent people, it’s hard to keep emotions in check. Emotional dysregulation occurs in extreme emotions, sudden mood swings, or inappropriate emotional reactions (either not responding to the degree they should or overreacting). Hyperfixation: This also plays out differently depending on the brand of neurodivergence in question. Often, neurodivergent people get very involved in topics or hobbies to the point of what others may think of as obsession. Picking Up on Subtleties but Missing the Obvious: Neurodivergent people may struggle with picking up on things neurotypical people can see easily. At the same time, they are incredibly adept at noticing the subtle things everyone else misses. Sensory Sensitivities: If you’re neurodivergent, you may be unable to ignore your clothes tag scratching your back, have trouble hearing certain sounds, and can’t quite deal with certain textures of clothing, food, and so on. Rejection Sensitivity: Neurodivergent people are often more sensitive to rejection than others due to neurological differences and life experiences. For instance, children with ADHD get much more negative feedback than their peers without ADHD. Neurodivergent people are often rejected to the point where they notice rejection even when it’s not there.

I would add things that hadn’t initially been on my daily checklist just to have the satisfaction of crossing them off. I loved lists. They made me feel in control of my life.

This principle, combined with the previous one, means you should always keep track of your progress and make sure to note each accomplishment, no matter how small. Emphasize how far away from starting from 0 percent you are, and how close to 100 percent you’ve become. This is why making a checklist of the tasks you need to do for the day or the steps toward a goal works great as a motivational strategy—crossing items off the list feels satisfying in itself as it gives you a tangible proof of progress and intensifies your drive the fewer items there are left to cross out.

Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most. There is something out there just for you. What you don’t want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing. You’re never going to be them. You’ll never be good at being somebody else. [4]

CHECKLIST Statement of earnings from Social Security Income tax returns Checkbook records Old and current statements Gifts Winnings Loans Capital gains Illegal sources Contract labor not reported to the IRS (tips, babysitting, errands)

This order gives us a convenient checklist for deciding where to put a note, starting at the top of the list and moving down: In which project will this be most useful? If none: In which area will this be most useful? If none: Which resource does this belong to? If none: Place in archives.

Sample Quarterly Review Summary Successes Maintained peak-performance habits Stabilized the company and team Raised funds for next phase of growth Upgraded company-wide marketing Launched leadership development program Failures Worked too much, felt worn out Failed to follow-up on marketing project on time Missed language learning goals in Portuguese Extended two project deadlines unnecessarily Didn’t spend sufficient time with family and friends Insights Perfectionism is a big development opportunity Reading should be scheduled into the day The mind needs to be trained as much as the body Weekly reviews must result in new weekly commitments I want to become world-class at peak performance Actions Determine what are the non-negotiables in my life Increase output with a color-coded master calendar Bring the joy/be more intentional Hire a virtual assistant Create a weekly accountability checklist

When we enjoy God’s creation, we reflect God himself. God does not stoically pronounce creation “good,” like a disinterested manager checking off a quality checklist so he can clock out early. God delights in the perfect acoustics of ocean waves, swoons over the subtle intensity of dark chocolate, and glories in robins’ eggs and peacock calls.

Here are some other items you can include on your Project Completion Checklist. I encourage you to personalize it for your own needs: Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were. Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? Officially close out the project and celebrate: Send any last emails, invoices, receipts, feedback forms, or documents, and celebrate your accomplishments with your team or collaborators so you receive the feeling of fulfillment for all the effort you put in.

Write a checklist of steps to follow when making a diagnosis of a problem, be it a sick patient, a broken car, writer’s block, or whatever it is you face in your daily life, instead of trying to do it by so-called instinct. Checklists, formulas, structured procedures: those are your best bet—at least, according to Kahneman.

Motivate the Workforce. Have you identified each person’s “hot button” and focused on it? Do you work personal pride and shared purpose into most communications? Are you keeping your powder dry for those urgent moments when you may need it?   8. Embrace the Front Lines. Have you made your intent clear and empowered those around you to act? Do you regularly meet with those in direct contact with customers? Is everybody able to communicate their ideas and concerns to you?   9. Build Leadership in Others. Are all managers expected to build leadership among their subordinates? Does the company culture foster the effective exercise of leadership? Are leadership development opportunities available to most, if not all, managers? 10. Manage Relations. Is the hierarchy reduced to a minimum, and does bad news travel up? Are managers self-aware and empathetic? Are autocratic, egocentric, and irritable behaviors censured? 11. Identify Personal Implications. Do employees appreciate how the firm’s vision and strategy impact them individually? What private sacrifices will be necessary for achieving the common cause? How will the plan affect people’s personal livelihood and quality of work life? 12. Convey Your Character. Have you communicated your commitment to performance with integrity? Do those in the organization know you as a person, and do they appreciate your aspirations and your agendas? Have you been in the same room or at least on the same call with everybody who works with you during the past year? 13. Dampen Overoptimism and Excessive Pessimism. Have you prepared the organization for unlikely but extremely consequential events? Do you celebrate success but also guard against the by-products of excessive confidence? Have you paved the way not only for quarterly results but for long-term performance?

STEP TWO: REVIEW YOUR EDUCATION If you’ve read this book, congratulations! You’ve given yourself a tremendous education. But knowledge isn’t power; it’s potential power. Decide what tools do you want to access today. And what do you want to keep track of in the future? 1. Are stem cells something that you want to pursue for some aspect of your life or for someone in your family? 2. Do you want to implement Dr. Sinclair’s Four Vitality Ingredients that help reverse biological aging? Or tap into the energy force of NMN? 3. Or, are there some technologies that you’ll want to keep track of so that you have them when you need them? Perhaps the Wnt Pathway for Osteoarthritis? 4. Is there anyone in your family or people you know whom you want to share information with about what you’ve learned here in the big 6—heart disease, diabetes/obesity, stroke, cancer, autoimmune disease, and Alzheimer’s? 5. Are you going to keep track of Gene Therapy and CRISPR and some of the transformations it’s creating? 6. Do you know anyone who has Parkinson’s or severe addiction who could feel relief from focused Ultrasound without brain surgery? Make a list of the things that you want to act on and things you want to keep track of, so that if you or anyone you know who needs help, you’ll have answers that you can share with them and that they can consider with their doctor. Just create a little checklist for yourself. The book is here. It’s the ultimate resource you can go back to as often as you need.

Lessons Learned Our past only exists in our brain and body, where we make and store our memories. If we live in the past, our energy is also trapped in it. We're unable to create new energy and a new future. The key to successfully modifying our future is to understand the different brain wave frequencies. We are capable of reconstructing our genes to allow growth and repair. Issues What are the things you do consistently every day that has turned into habits and an automatic routine? Do you think you're capable of breaking the cycle? Analyze how your life is right now. Do you think you have positive or negative energy? Why? Dr. Joe teaches us that when we create our new future, we can lose a few people only because they have no part in it. Are you willing to accept that? Goals Understand the different brain frequencies and how they affect the energy we have in our bodies. Meditate to forget the anticipated future and known reality. Action Steps Make a list of the things you routinely do daily. The next day, try to do things differently from how you usually do them. Meditate and try to forget reality as you know it. Liberate yourself from things that link you to the present. Checklist While meditating, accept that it's normal to sometimes slip into the known reality. Claim that you're capable of entering the optimal spot of the generous present.

Project Kickoff Checklist, and for the latter, the Project Completion Checklist.

Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.

think of this five-step checklist as a first pass, taking no more than twenty to thirty minutes. You’re only trying to get a sense of what kind of material you already have in your Second Brain.

some other items you can include on your Project Completion Checklist. I encourage you to personalize it for your own needs: Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were. Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? Officially close out the project and celebrate: Send any last emails, invoices, receipts, feedback forms, or documents, and celebrate your accomplishments with your team or collaborators so you receive the feeling of fulfillment for all the effort you put in.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency 1999 Tears of the Giraffe 2000 Mortality for Beautiful Girls 2001 The Kalahari Typing School for Men 2002 The Full Cupboard of Life 2003 In the Company of Cheerful Ladies 2004

On any given day in the United States alone, some ninety thousand people are admitted to intensive care. Over a year, an estimated five million Americans will be, and over a normal lifetime nearly all of us will come to know the glassed bay of an ICU from the inside. Wide swaths of medicine now depend on the life support systems that ICUs provide: care for premature infants; for victims of trauma, strokes, and heart attacks; for patients who have had surgery on their brains, hearts, lungs, or major blood vessels. Critical care has become an increasingly large portion of what hospitals do. Fifty years ago, ICUs barely existed. Now, to take a recent random day in my hospital, 155 of our almost 700 patients are in intensive care. The average stay of an ICU patient is four days, and the survival rate is 86 percent. Going into an ICU, being put on a mechanical ventilator, having tubes and wires run into and out of you, is not a sentence of death. But the days will be the most precarious of your life.

When we enjoy God’s creation, we reflect God himself. God does not stoically pronounce creation “good”, like a disinterested manager checking off a quality checklist so he can clock out early.

Before they taxi onto the runway and take off, airline pilots run through a “preflight checklist” that tells them everything they need to check or do. It ensures they complete all the necessary steps without having to rely on their unreliable brains.

Play to your strengths. There are many roads to happiness, but almost all of them are found by pursuing your particular strengths, which are likely to change over time. Change is intimidating for almost everyone, as it requires us to move from the known to the unknown, and hence from the predictable to the unpredictable. For this reason, many people remain too long with jobs or hobbies that once suited them but do not anymore. Just because you once loved something doesn’t mean you are destined to always feel that way. Your changing sources of happiness are probably telling you that your old life doesn’t suit you anymore. Seek the original source. Our modern world provides numerous opportunities for happiness that resemble but do not duplicate the original sources. Some are perfectly fine (e.g., TV and movies), some probably do more harm than good (e.g., alcohol, drugs, and junk food), but none is as good as the ancestral originals. Time with family and friends sits at the top of our species’ checklist and is our best recipe for happiness.

The difference between me and you is. I stand with every innocent, oppressed, victimized person. But before you decide to stand with these people, you go through a checklist. There they belong. country, group, region and religion.

Estate-Planning Checklist (for each of you) • Up-to-date will • Healthcare proxy • Power of attorney • Living will • HIPAA form •  List of what you are bequeathing • Legacy requests •  Where your important documents are kept • What assets you have • Where your accounts are located • Account numbers, PINs, and passwords •  Names of trusted people who know where your car keys, house keys, and safe deposit box keys are kept • Important names and contact information: ○ Attorney/financial adviser/CPA ○ Insurance broker ○ Healthcare providers ○ Estate attorney ○ Bank name and branch office location ○ Safe deposit box location and number

When the time comes for someone to step in and become the expert on your life, you have the ability to prepare them.

I need to live. It would be easier to give up—so much easier. It would hurt less, certainly. But survival is in my nature. I’m not sure I could stop clawing for life even if I were the last person clinging to this godforsaken planet. My life is just a checklist of awful people and places and positions I needed to push through.

I keep this checklist on a digital sticky note on my computer, so I can easily refer to it. Clear my email inbox. Check my calendar. Clear my computer desktop. Clear my notes inbox. Choose my tasks for the week.

Having hit on this “theory,” I began to recognize checklists in odd corners everywhere—in the hands of professional football coordinators, say, or on stage sets. Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor. “David Lee Roth had a checklist!” I yelled at the radio.

Having a checklist for what classifies as friendship leads only to a friendless life.

if i’m going to share my life with a partner it would be foolish not to ask myself twenty years from now is this person going to be someone i still laugh with or am i just distracted by their charm do i see us evolving into new people by the decade or does the growing ever come to a pause i don’t want to be distracted by the looks or the money i want to know if they pull the best or the worst out of me deep at the core are our values the same in thirty years will we still jump into bed like we’re twenty can i picture us in old age conquering the world like we’ve got young blood running in our veins - checklist

Teams need to believe that their work is important. Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful. Teams need clear goals and defined roles. Team members need to know they can depend on one another. But, most important, teams need psychological safety. To create psychological safety, Bock said, team leaders needed to model the right behaviors. There were Google-designed checklists they could use: Leaders should not interrupt teammates during conversations, because that will establish an interrupting norm. They should demonstrate they are listening by summarizing what people say after they said it. They should admit what they don’t know. They shouldn’t end a meeting until all team members have spoken at least once. They should encourage people who are upset to express their frustrations, and encourage teammates to respond in nonjudgmental ways. They should call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion.

name-calling is fear’s first line of defense, and with the name comes the sealed box that reduces human complexity to a checklist of prejudice and convenience. As

Even if your home is really cluttered, it’s important to get into the habit of doing regular daily cleaning.

It’s like there’s a check-list of accomplishments that people expect from you. Like it’s the only path to happiness, this societal construct of what makes us successful and worthy. But, don’t buy it. You can be happy no matter which part of the story you’re in. You are worthy in every chapter.

ritual checklist

DO NOT SEARCH FOR SECURITY in the world you inhabit. You tend to make mental checklists of things you need to do in order to gain control of your life. If only you could check everything off your list,

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Checklists are often conceived in the aftermath of experiences. You don’t make a travel checklist until you’ve had a vacation where you realise only once you’ve checked in to your hotel room that you forgot to carry traveler’s cheques. You don’t realise you need to have a classic black outfit in your wardrobe unless you’re invited to a black-tie event, and have nothing to wear. You don’t know that a toxic boss is just as harmful to your mental health as a toxic relationship until you’ve had both. You don’t know what’s going to break your heart unless your heart has been broken.

Nowadays, there is more freedom of choice, which may have complicated life for people instead of making it easier. People are living with their checklists and pens in their pockets, ready to find someone who meets their standards and expectations. It is like buying a product in a local store. Tall? Check? Funny? Check! Smoking? Heavy minus. And so on, and on, and on. They don’t even realize that they themselves can be the standard for someone they personally would never choose. It’s a dilemma that makes people lonely.

There’s no official checklist, but here’s what we suggest: Take email off your phone. Take all social media off your phone, transfer it to a desktop, and schedule set times to check it each day or, ideally, each week. Disable your web browser. I’m a bit lenient on this one since I hate surfing the web on my phone and use this only when people send me links. But this is typically a key facet of a dumbphone. Delete all notifications, including those for texts. I set my phone so I have to (1) unlock it and (2) click on the text message box to (3) even see if I have any text messages. This was a game changer. Ditch news apps or at least news alerts. They are the devil. Delete every single app you don’t need or that doesn’t make your life seriously easier. And keep all the wonder apps that do make life so much easier—maps, calculator, Alaska Airlines, etc. What Knapp put in one box and labeled “The Future.” Consolidate said apps into a few simple boxes so your home screen is free and clear. Finally, set your phone to grayscale mode. This does something neurobiologically that I’m not smart enough to explain, something to do with decreasing dopamine addiction. Google

To create psychological safety, Bock said, team leaders needed to model the right behaviors. There were Google-designed checklists they could use: Leaders should not interrupt teammates during conversations, because that will establish an interrupting norm. They should demonstrate they are listening by summarizing what people say after they said it. They should admit what they don’t know. They shouldn’t end a meeting until all team members have spoken at least once. They should encourage people who are upset to express their frustrations, and encourage teammates to respond in nonjudgmental ways. They should call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion.

A trip to Disney World is pretty much the epitome of why it is so important to plan your leisure time.

Someday, when we are old and grey, we are not going to wish we would have spent more time watching television or reading the status updates of people we don’t even like on Facebook.

So, start your decluttering challenge today. Letting go of unloved stuff is a critical part of having an organized home,

Organization is about making your life easier and your home more functional, not about having some magazine-worthy space.

Creating a “home” inside your home for all of your belongings is exactly what organization is all about.

Just as we are constantly bringing new things into our homes, we need to make sure we are taking out the old stuff at the same pace.

I give my home a “hug” by tidying-up a space or organizing a drawer. I instantly feel a little more love, respect and appreciation for what I have when I’ve taken a second to care for it.

My husband made me read books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Wealthy Barber, which I highly recommend for anyone looking to transform their financial situation and learn the basics of growing your personal wealth.

YOUR LONGEVITY HEALTH, FITNESS & LONGEVITY WEEKLY CHECKLIST 1. Hydrate. Drink half your body weight in ounces of water per day. Add some fresh lemon and a pinch of Celtic sea salt to optimize your hydration and electrolyte balance. 2. Eat foods closest to their natural source. Avoid processed carbs, and low quality processed meats. 3. Decrease Disease Risk. Consume at least one serving of cruciferous vegetables per day including broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, or kale. 4. Commit to a structured eating window. Consume meals in an 8 to 12 hours and fast for 12-16 hour window each day. 5. Stay consistent with sleep. Go to sleep and wake up at about the same times each day. 6. Get strong. Perform three resistance training sessions per week. 7. Strengthen your heart, lungs, and build endurance with 3 cardiovascular exercise sessions of 20 to 30 minutes each session. 8. Consider the power of using heat and cold to use positive stressors to lower your blood pressure, reduce inflammation, reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s, and cut your risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 50%.

Playlists should be as useful as checklists, yet your organization has many checklists and probably zero playlists. A checklist is useful for situations where you need to replicate the same behaviors every time. It’s prescriptive; it stops people from making an error. On the other hand, a playlist is useful for situations where you need a stimulus, a way of producing new ideas. It’s generative; it stops people from overlooking an option. (Don’t forget to shine your spotlight over here …) Playlists also spur us to multitrack.

Checklists and plans are useful tools as long as we use them as guides and not rulebooks. As we journey through life, we are supposed to change and so should our goals.

One study concluded that there were 1.7 errors per patient per day in America's ICUs. Of these errors, 29 percent could have caused clinically significant harm or death. Given that the average ICU length of stay is three days, this research suggests that nearly all patients hospitalized in the ICU sustain a potentially life-threatening mistake at some point during their stay.

Don't date just to escape the "Im Single" status. Don't marry just to tick off a checklist. Life is NOT a grocery list. Find yourself first, then find someone who can accommodate the talents, the vision and the ambitions in your heart, someone who can be the enabler for you to emerge into your greatness. Find someone who believes in you, supports and encourages you even when the world laughs at your guts. But first, find yourself because it is far more important to be the right person than it is to date/marry the right person. Become a person of value. Don't go looking for a good woman until you've become a good man. And ladies, don't go looking for a good man till you've become a good woman. If you want a loving, honest, faithful, supportive and rich partner; first become what you are looking for. You must meet the requirements of your own requirements! Leaders, vision bearers and dream chasers look for character, commitment, vision, grit, faith, etc...but ordinary people look for coca-cola bottle shape kinder girl, a six pack kinder guy and a heavy bank balance...but dear men, it's her character that will raise your children not her beauty. It is character that makes a great wife. Dear ladies, It is character that makes a great Dad/husband not a car or a big wallet. Take note good people, you don't need to die to go to hell...misalignment of core values/purpose In your relationship/marriage is the beginning of your own hell right here on earth. In my humble opinion, misalignment of core values is worst than cheating. Yes, both are evil but cheating is a lesser evil compared to misalignment of core values. Trust me, you don't want to test this theory, you may not come out alive. So, leave the girl/boy down the road to a boy/girl down the road. Leave slay queens to slay kings. Leave party queens to party kings. Leave nyaope boys to nyaope girls, drug addicts to drug addicts, leave weed girls to weed boys, playboys to playgirls..,,AND legacy builders to legacy builders!

Minimizing Checklist How will you know when you’ve cleared out enough clutter and excess from your living room and family room or great room? Ask yourself these questions: ☐ Is this space calming? Does it reduce stress? ☐ Does this space encourage conversation? ☐ Is this space inviting to my family? To my friends? ☐ Is this space easy to maintain? ☐ Does this space highlight what is important to our family? ☐ Does this space encourage my family to live life to the fullest? ☐ Does this space promote our family’s values?

Serial killers suck the life out of the people around them. They harbor an effortless capability of donning what psychopathy pioneer and psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley coined in 1941 as “the mask of sanity.” It was Cleckley’s work before his death in 1984 that flexed Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Hare’s mental muscle enough to develop his Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R): twenty characteristics defining psychopathic behavior. Used properly, the PCL-R checklist is an accurate way to determine the psychopath from the non-psychopath.

No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist.

Once the last guest is gone, maintenance crews descend on each attraction. The crews perform inspections of ride vehicles and tracks based upon Disney’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly maintenance checklist. They look for wear and potential mechanical problems. The ride engineers and maintenance workers perform their tasks, and by the end of their shift, just mere hours before thousands descend on the parks again, the attractions are powered up and run through their paces again before any guests can climb aboard. All of this preventive and corrective maintenance equates to roughly one thousand daily hours of inspection time, on all attractions.

When we really think about, the time we have in life to dedicate to our own happiness is a very, very small amount.

When I spend my weekend laying around and watching non-stop television, I feel tired and lethargic. I need to step out of my comfort zone, and my pajamas, in order to make the most of my time off from work.

Doctors experience death more than any other professionals do—more than firefighters, policemen, or soldiers—yet we always think about death as a very concrete construct. It’s a box on a checklist, a red bar on a chart, or an outcome in a clinical trial. Death is secular, sterile, and singular—and, unlike many other things in medicine, incredibly binary. So it was interesting to think of death more as a concept and a process than as a fact and an endpoint.