Productivity Playbook: The Checklist Approach

Throughout my professional journey in the energy industry, I’ve spent a significant portion of my career in field locations.

As a Production/Operations Engineer, my responsibility was to collaborate with my team to ensure our asset produced consistently in a manner that was safe, reliable, and efficient. In essence, our goal was to maximize productivity.

To be effective in field locations, a production engineer must embody certain characteristics:

• Time Management: The work schedule varies depending on the organization, with shifts that can last 4, 8, or even 12 hours. Each shift comes with specific tasks and targets that need to be accomplished.

• Organization: We meticulously schedule tasks to prevent an overload of simultaneous responsibilities. A lack of organization can lead to safety issues.

• Risk Management: Occasionally, operations encounter unforeseen circumstances that require immediate attention. It’s crucial to prioritize and manage these deviations swiftly and efficiently to prevent any potential escalation.

In addition to these traits, there’s another skill that I believe everyone should adopt to enhance their productivity: Standardization, which involves creating a checklist.

In the field, we are responsible for a multitude of equipment that needs to be maintained and kept in optimal condition.

These pieces of equipment, each with different maintenance schedules and modes of operation, can be overwhelming for an operator.

By standardizing these activities and creating a step-by-step checklist for maintaining and operating this equipment, we can ensure safe and reliable operations for both existing and new operators.

This checklist contributes to our productivity because it:

• Provides a well-documented process for tasks

• Reduces the time required for someone to replicate the results

• Offers an opportunity to improve processes

• Facilitates the memorization of the process

How can this be beneficial to you?

In your daily life, if you are observant and intentional, you’ll notice opportunities to standardize some of your routine tasks by creating a checklist. This could apply to your morning routine, exercise regimen, weekend activities, work schedule, hobbies, and more.

By understanding the steps you take to complete tasks, documenting those steps, adhering to the instructions, and seeking opportunities for improvement, you can significantly enhance your productivity.

Here are some steps to help you create a checklist for your activities to boost your productivity:

• Identify your routine activities

• Determine the most efficient way to perform these activities

• Document the steps for optimal performance

• Consistently follow these steps until the procedure becomes second nature

• Understand how to manage deviations from the documented processes and update the checklist accordingly (use an if statement)

• Seek a better way of doing the same thing - perhaps a faster, safer, or more energy-efficient method

• Measure the impact of the improvement

• Reward yourself each time you make an improvement

The beauty of this standardization approach is that it can be applied to your job, personal life, or side projects. Feel free to adapt these principles to your specific context!