This is why I make lists. Of everything. Checklists for technical processes (work and personal). Checklists for travel. Little "how to" docs on pretty much everything I do that I'm sure I won't remember past a week.

It completely removes the stress of doing things repeatedly. I recently had to do something I hadn't done in 2 years. Yep, the checklist/doc on it was 95% correct, but it was no problem fixing the 5%.

I am kind of a bit lazy person at times. But when I need to absolutely not to forget anything that can become messy, a checklist is difficult to beat and as you say, it removes all the stress: you elaborate it and when the time comes, keep applying it or applying all at once.

It works very well for me.

+1 for lists. I used to procrastinate and suffer every year to do my taxes. Always submit last minute (stress) or late (stress + penalties), but ever since I created a checklist for all the steps (data extractions, data transform in Excel, data loading into tax software, etc.) the tax season is no longer this bad. It still takes me a day, but no stress... just grind though the checkboxes!

Temporal cognitive load reduction A.K.A. "thanks, past self!"

Same. Like what to take in my luggage. Grocery list. To do list. And everything else. I use Dynalist. Great tool. My secret super power, by those who also made Obsidian.

In like Apple Notes or what do you store the checklists in?

Yeah, my OneNote notebook is huge now, littered with checklists, processes, and just notes on different subjects. It's like a secondary memory for me at this point, like longterm storage for rarely used but important info.

The right way to do it is to have one person (preferably you) go over the checklist, while someone else (typically a son) do the actual thing.