achieve, checking/ticking the box, checking both boxes

Can a secretary of state be both "radically disappointing" and effective strategically? Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says Rex Tillerson is checking both boxes.



The New Yorker
These words, written by James Baldwin, appeared in our pages in 1962.


James Baldwin: Letter from a Region in My Mind
And here we are, at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen.
NEWYORKER.COM

In the sentence, "tick the box" means mark the specific checkbox. If we have the following checkboxes

Ticking a box (British English) and Checking a box (American English) mean the same thing and are generally understood on both sides of the Atlantic.


checking the box -> there is a box, and mark it with a check mark if you want to select it (This is commonly used in hard copies [forms])

achieve

VERB

[WITH OBJECT]

• Successfully bring about or reach (a desired objective or result) by effort, skill, or courage.

  ‘he achieved his ambition to become a press photographer’

  ‘the killings achieved nothing’

  no object ‘people striving to achieve’

Origin

Middle English (in the sense ‘complete successfully’): from Old French achever ‘come or bring to a head’, from a chief ‘to a head’.