Do you ever get the feeling that the thing you’re doing at that moment, you’ve done at least once before? Do you find yourself trying to remember how you did it, so you can do it again? This happens to me yearly now when I’m doing a seasonal task - packing for vacation in the summer, raking leaves or chopping wood in the fall, shoveling snow in the winter and firing up the grill in the spring. Years ago I found myself doing these tasks and feeling like I’d learned a trick or a shortcut last year but I couldn’t remember what it was. When you’re pressed for time that’s a bad feeling to have.

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The reality of life today is that we have a lot of technical tasks we need to accomplish - even in the very-human realm of fathering. Another truth is that our brains are not designed to hold so much information and make it available step by step - especially for tasks we only do a few times a year or relatively infrequently.

But this is one of those times when I should know better - Standard Operating Procedures get beat into your head from the first day you show up for work in the Army. Much if not all of my time leading an infantry platoon or a Special Forces ODA between deployments was spent developing, capturing, practicing and revising all those actions we’d have to do when we headed overseas. Since every group of individuals is different - everyone’s experiences in life shape them in a separate way - every team’s going to have their own way of doing things. But it’s critical that every member of the team is of the same mind when in combat - that everyone knows what to expect from each other, especially when being shot at and team members are most at risk for doing something erratic.

A Standard Operating Procedure is defined as an established way of doing something that’s supposed to be followed in carrying out a specific operation or situation. For an individual who’s never used one knowingly before, probably the best introductory example you can find is in an instruction manual - like for a baby’s carseat. That manual’s going to tell you how to strap down the seat securely in your car, how to position the seat for best effect and then how to put your baby in it for use. It’s not meant to be interesting reading - it’s supposed to tell you how to do something right. So long as you have the manual handy you should never have a problem knowing how to do that task.

Want proof SOPs are used in the military? Ask any current or former servicemember with an infantry background to explain Battle Drill 1A for you. Don’t be surprised when the nearest flat surface becomes a makeshift sand table and you’re seeing a salt shaker and a pepper shaker maneuvering on a bottle of ketchup. How many other organizations of hundreds of thousands of people all know how to do the same exact thing the same exact way? A Battle Drill is a standardized form of an SOP that is so critical to the way a military fights that its procedure is dictated to all. Which is also usually a pretty good sign it’s effective.

What I propose to you is to make small manuals for yourself in order to first accomplish the task right next time, but more importantly learn continuously. In our case here the SOPs we develop will look like checklists - one-man SOPs for getting something done right with a minimum of wasted time, effort, frustration and mistakes.

The next time you as a father undertake a multi-step task (I recommend one you find yourself undertaking on a weekly basis), bring along a piece of paper and a pen. See if you can describe the task as a series of steps, one after the other. There’s probably a way you prefer doing it, or an end-state you’re going for - make that explicit. Think about the next time you’ll have to do that task and how you’d like yourself to approach it. Take that sheet once it’s done and make it available for next week (I like to type it out & make it available on my phone). Then use it the next time you need to complete that task.

Here’s an example of an SOP I use a few times a year in the fall:

Echo PB-250LN Power Blower Startup (Starting Cold Engine):

I pulled a lot of these steps right from the actual power blower manual, simplified them, typed them out and put them on my phone. It makes my life a hell of a lot easier.