So what I get from this is that some people need to be forced to write decent commit messages.
Echoing what others have mentioned, commit messages need to document why something was changed and put it into the context of the project. You should do this even for private projects, just so 1) you build good habits and 2) if you let the project rest for a while you don’t need to figure put everything from the start again.
Not to sound insensitive, wouldn’t keeping a checklist in a text file/note/etc, then copying it when you want to check it off completely fulfill your requirements?