Many years ago Alfred North Whitehead cogently observed, “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” Checklists provide the micro version of that macro observation: whenever you have to think about anything, either because of some regularity of a refreshed view (“At the end of every calendar year, I want/need to . . .”) or a specific situation that requires more detail than you can easily recall (“Before I deliver a seminar, I need to . . .”), you should entrust those jobs to your “external mind”—your management
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