The gist: When you want to work smarter and faster on your most critical work—even if it’s creative—a simple checklist is what you need.

Think you have a busy day? Try working as a trauma specialist in one of the busiest hospitals in the world. That’s where Peter Pronovost found himself in 2001 at Johns Hopkins.

A patient would arrive, and it would take the herculean effort of dozens of professionals around the clock to save, stabilize, and nurse them back to health.

Studies show the average trauma patient needs 178 individual actions performed for them each day to regain health. These are critical, life-saving interventions. With so many to do, there’s great risk: if even one is missed or performed wrong, it could kill someone.

So, Provonost conjured up a novel concept that went on to revolutionize the world of medicine and patient care by making their work faster and more accurate, saving millions of lives.

The groundbreaking technology? A checklist. That’s right, a lousy, old checklist.¹

Despite widespread use the world over, the checklist had never caught on with surgeons, doctors, nurses, and others involved in the business of saving lives under difficult and stressful circumstances. File that under “humans be crazy.”

If a checklist can save a life on the brink, it can probably do wonders for you, too. Or, at least, your daily to do list.

Since learning about the power of the checklist, I’ve started implementing it in my life. In fact, I’m following one as I write this very article, using my favorite to do app, Trello.

If you want to work faster and make fewer mistakes on your most critical work, you’ll want to develop your own.