Some things have too many steps to keep in your head
Moving house. Preparing for surgery. Onboarding a new employee. Planning a trip. Getting a car ready for winter. Closing up a cottage. Preparing for a job interview.
These are the situations where forgetting one thing causes a problem — sometimes a small one, sometimes a significant one. And the reason people forget isn’t carelessness. It’s that the list of things to do is longer than anyone can reliably hold in their head under pressure.
AI is genuinely good at this. Give it a situation and it will build you a checklist that’s more complete than anything you’d put together yourself — in about thirty seconds.
What this helps with
Use this any time you’re facing a process with multiple steps, especially one you don’t do often enough to have memorized. Moving, medical procedures, travel, home maintenance, life admin, work projects, seasonal tasks, major purchases — anything where missing a step has a cost.
Try this
Open Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI tool and paste this:
“I need a complete checklist for [describe the situation in as much detail as you can]. Please make it specific and practical — not generic advice, but actual steps I need to take. Organize it in the order things need to happen, flag anything that’s time-sensitive, and include anything that’s commonly forgotten or overlooked.”
What you’ll actually get back
Someone was preparing to list their home for sale. They knew the basics — declutter, clean, fix obvious things — but weren’t sure what they were missing or what order to do things in.
They typed this:
“I’m preparing my home to list for sale in about six weeks. It’s a three-bedroom detached house and I’ve lived here for twelve years. Give me a complete checklist of everything I should be doing to prepare, organized by what to do first.”
What came back was organized into four stages. The first two weeks covered immediate priorities — repairs, decluttering room by room, getting quotes for anything that needed professional attention, and pulling together documents. Weeks three and four covered cosmetic improvements — fresh paint in neutral colours, updated fixtures, curb appeal. Week five covered final preparation — deep cleaning, staging, photography preparation, and making sure every light in the house worked. Listing week covered agent preparation, disclosure documents, and permits for any work done on the property.
Several items hadn’t occurred to them at all — getting the furnace serviced so it showed as recently maintained on the inspection report, replacing dated cabinet hardware, checking that all window locks worked, and gathering permit documents for the deck they’d added four years earlier.
That checklist became their actual plan for the next six weeks. They printed it and worked through it section by section.
Make it specific to your situation
The more detail you give, the more useful the checklist. Compare these two approaches:
“Give me a packing checklist for a trip.”
“Give me a packing checklist for a ten-day trip to Portugal in October with my husband. We’re staying in a mix of hotels and a rented apartment. I have a bad knee so comfortable walking shoes are essential. We’re flying carry-on only and I take daily medication that needs to stay with me.”
The second prompt gets you something you can actually use. The first gets you something generic you could find anywhere. The extra thirty seconds of description makes the difference between a useful tool and a wasted one.
Situations where this helps most
Before a medical procedure, ask for a checklist of what to prepare at home, what to arrange for the day itself, what to bring, and what to sort out for recovery. People routinely underestimate how much preparation recovery requires — AI will surface the things that don’t occur to you until you’re already home and struggling.
Before hiring a contractor, ask for a checklist of everything to confirm before work starts, what to check during the project, and what to verify before making final payment. This is one of the highest-value uses — the checklist becomes your protection against the most common ways contractor jobs go wrong.
Before a long trip or extended absence, ask for a checklist of everything to sort out at home before you leave — mail, utilities, plants, insurance notifications, security, and anything that could become a problem while you’re away.
For seasonal home maintenance, ask for a checklist specific to your home and climate. A house in a cold climate with a gas furnace, wood deck, and older roof has a very different autumn checklist than a newer townhouse in a mild climate.
For work transitions — starting a new job, handing over a project, preparing for a launch — ask for a checklist that covers what needs to happen, in what order, and what’s commonly missed at each stage.
A few more useful prompts
“I’m having a minor surgical procedure next week. Give me a checklist of everything I should prepare at home before I go in, what to arrange for the day, and what to set up for recovery.”
“I’m starting a new job in two weeks. Give me a checklist of everything I should do before my first day and in my first week to set myself up well.”
“Give me a checklist for closing up a cottage for the season. It has a well, a septic system, a wood-burning fireplace, and an unheated garage.”
“I’m moving from a house I’ve owned for fifteen years into a rental apartment. Give me a complete checklist covering both the move itself and everything I need to handle on the administrative and financial side.”
“Give me a checklist for preparing my car for a long road trip. It’s six years old and I’m driving roughly 2,000 kilometres over four days.”
Save it and reuse it
Once you have a checklist you’re happy with, save it somewhere you’ll actually find it. Copy it into a notes app, print it, or paste it into a document. A checklist that lives in a closed chat window isn’t useful when you’re in the middle of moving day.
If you do the same thing regularly — closing the cottage each autumn, onboarding new staff, preparing for annual financial reviews — save the checklist and refine it each time you use it. After two or three rounds it becomes genuinely comprehensive and specific to your situation in a way that no generic template ever will be.
Verify it
For checklists involving medical procedures, legal processes, or significant financial transactions, treat the AI checklist as a strong starting point rather than a complete authoritative guide. Run it past the relevant professional to confirm nothing important is missing for your specific situation. AI is thorough but it doesn’t know your full circumstances — a good checklist combined with a five-minute conversation with the right person is better than either one alone.
Start with something coming up
Think of one thing on your horizon that has more steps than you’ve written down. A trip, a procedure, a project, a move, a seasonal task you keep meaning to get organized about.
Describe it to AI with as much detail as you can. Ask for a complete checklist organized in order.
The version you get back will almost certainly include things you hadn’t thought of. That’s the point — and that’s what makes it worth the thirty seconds it takes to ask properly.
What to read next
How to Use AI to Get Organised
How to Use AI to Make Better Decisions
What to Ask Before Hiring a Contractor
How to Use AI When You’re Moving House
Or visit the Decision Hub