Why I Make a List Before I Ruin Perfectly Good Wood

Every project in my shop starts the same way. Before a tool is plugged in or a plane is picked up, I make a list.

I call it a triple-O—order of operations. It sounds formal, but it is anything but. It is simply a way to think through a project before the wood starts disappearing. Woodworking has a lot of moving parts, and once you cut something, you do not get it back. A checklist slows you down just enough to keep you out of trouble.

I do this for almost everything, not just woodworking. Any project with multiple steps gets written down. That habit comes straight from my time in the military. Everything had a checklist: equipment maintenance, packing, prep work. If something mattered, it was written down in the order it needed to happen—not because we could not remember but because memory is unreliable when things get busy.

The same is true in the shop.

Woodworking rewards doing…