Add an option for notifications to only email once it is time for your task to be completed.
I saw a suggestion to require tasks to be completed in order. I believe I saw that it is an "in progress" change.
Once this is in place, it would be nice to have the choice to not notify the assigned people of the checklist until it is time for their task(s) to be completed. This could be a choice made once someone clicks "Use Workflow", or it could be checkbox option at the workflow settings portion.
Some of our checklists need to notify everyone from the beginning, while others take awhile to complete, making it hard to manage when you receive an email at the beginning but not once it is time for your task.