We’re obsessed with lists. Bestseller lists. Hot 100 lists. Movie earnings lists. Lists of TV channels. Shopping lists. Friend lists on social networks. The list of lists goes on and on. But when it comes to your personal and professional life, there’s nothing more important than your checklists.
You may not want to admit it, but you’ve already come up with and internalized your personal checklists in your head on everything from the kinds of movies and food you like to who you want to be your friends and romantic partners. And you also have a checklist for what you want in a job.
Most people don’t bother to take the next step and actually write out any of these (save for the dating one, which is used on eHarmony and match.com), but if you take the time to put pen to paper and think about it, you will find that your checklist might show you what kind of job you really want, or pinpoint some problem areas that have been bugging you about your current career.
I advocate the two-column, “Must-Have” and “Can’t Have” approach. Here’s an example of some of my checklist (neither category is ordinal):
Must Have
- coffee
- nice people
- creativity-fostering environment
- air conditioning
- windows in the office
- occasional free lunches
- bi-weekly paychecks
- company computers
- high-speed internet
Can’t Have
- control freak boss
- daily status meetings
- several bosses per employee
- non-contracted tasks
- commission-based pay
- environmentally unfriendly policies
- unpaid overtime
- Bible-sized employee handbooks
- lack of a solid command structure
Of course, you can write out your checklist in more detail. But once you’ve made one, you’ll be able to better understand what you really want in a job.
