Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath

So far, as we’ve discussed how to shape the Path, we’ve encountered two strategies: (1) tweaking the environment and (2) building habits. There’s a tool that perfectly combines these two strategies. It’s something that can be added to the environment in order to make behavior more consistent and habitual. That tool is the humble checklist. We discuss it with some trepidation, because we know the associations buzzing in most readers’ heads: mundane, routine, bureaucratic. “Use a checklist,” we admit, sounds like advice a dad would give a college student, along with some tips on tire-pressure gauges and not charging beer to his Exxon card. But bear with us, because your perceptions are about to change. What if we asserted that checklists can be game-changing, that checklists can save lives?