For your 'Dopp kit' - do you have duplicates for things that you use on a daily (or more frequent) basis? e.g. Toothbruth, hair gel

While I follow this approach generally pre-travel, I find that on occasion I can end up taking the 'regulars' out of my travel kit for use and absentmindedly place them back in their 'normal' locations when using them as part of my regular routine.

Not completely. I buy little travel toothpastes that inevitably aren’t the one I like using. I use a hot brush and soap for shaving with a safety razor at home, but pack a little travel shave cream and disposable razor for the road.

When it’s packing time, I treat that travel kit part as its own separate list and validate that each item is still in there, or temporarily borrow it from my normal setup. It’s also one of the first things I unpack when I get home so that I can brush my teeth that night.

Cheat code: it's not illegal to rinse out the little toothpaste tubes and fill it with your favorite brand! :-P

I have found that a tech organizer bag/pouch works great for dopp kit. It is stocked and ready to go basically all the time, with duplicates or near-discards (or specialty travel sized things).

I go even a step farther and some unique items I store in the travel kit. Not sexy, but my manual (rotating) nose-hair trimmer is small and lives in that travel kit b/c at least it has a home for when I need it, and doubles that I'd have it "just in case" when traveling.

Small tweezers, a flat nail file, small nail clippers, little comb, tide pen, folding travel toothbrush, extra tray of razor blades (in a zip-loc bag), sliver of bar shampoo (also in that ziploc bag), some hair-care products that I've transferred into tiny plastic screwtop containers from Daiso (search for "5 gram cosmetic containers"), a refillable travel perfume atomizer, etc. etc. etc.

Cork Puller (two thin strips of metal that slide down the edges of a cork) since that usually doesn't draw the ire of TSA, little round hair brush that folds up and has a sewing/button repair kit built into it. Also: some minimal medicines! Tylenol, Benadryl (runny nose), couple blister packs of DayQuil/NyQuil, anything that'll hold me over until I can walk/taxi to a convenience store.

All that stuff is in a little pouch that I keep next to my socks (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017SKRWL4 - bagsmart electronics travel organizer case). Grab 5 socks, 5 underwear, that pouch, into a packing cube and I'm 99% ready to go. Worst case: buy shirts and pants at your destination, but brush, shave, groom, bathe are all taken care of.

Wow. I independently came up with something almost identical for identical reasons, including the checklists for months out, weeks out, day before, etc.

I also have job interview checklists, beginning / ending job checklists, end of month checklists (for repetitive admin).

For all of these the checklist template is something I edit after one of these events after thinking "man, I wish I'd thought to do X" or "I wish Id thought of doing X earlier than I did".

It's also an amazing coping mechanism for ADHD.

That’s exactly how I ended up doing this. Otherwise I’d be all stressed that my excitement-addled brain was forgetting something, which it inevitably was. Now I have more concrete work to do before a trip, but it’s easier and far less stressful.

OMG. I showed my friends the wiki I made for a recent job hunt with details about every job, every person I talked to, a status page for “initial contact”/“recruiter screen”/“tech screw”/… etc companies, and a timeline of events. Some responded in horror. Others started taking notes. I’ve never been a PM, but I PMed the “get a job” to the extreme.

My wife uses tabs on a google sheet for packing lists. Different destinations and trips have different needs. But starting with history, and editing is much more reliable.

Then a post-review for things not used, things missed, etc.