Description: This week, we’re flipping the traditional to-do list on its head! Instead of focusing on what’s left undone, try ending your day by listing three things you accomplished—big or small.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Tina Boogren. This is episode 23. And this week's invitation, uh, is kind of a fun one. I heard someone mentioned this recently and that they do this and I was like, ooh, I'm going to try that. And you know, so often I make these, uh, podcast episodes and invitations about things that I'm trying to work on myself. Remember, ooh, I always, always remind you that I stand beside you as we try these little, little strategies, little invitations, little self-care hacks. And so this is the one I'm going to try and I'm going to offer it up to you. So it is the reverse to-do list.
That's right, the reverse to-do list. So here's how this works. So at the end of the day, maybe the end of the workday or in the evening, instead of focusing on all the stuff that you didn't get done, let's write down three things that we accomplished today. Big, small, doesn't matter. Maybe you want to do more than three. Remember, everything's on a dial, right? Sometimes we can turn that dial up. Sometimes we can turn that dial down. So maybe if you can't come up with three things, you just write one thing. Or you just try this one day. But what I'm going to commit to is trying to do this every single day this week. I'm going to include the weekends for myself personally and see how that shifts my mindset.
Here's what I'm hoping. I'm wondering if this will also help me get a better night's sleep. Oftentimes, what happens for me personally is If I'm lucky enough to fall asleep okay, I wake up, oh, usually around 2 or 3 a. m. and my mind starts wandering to all the things that I need to get done. Ugh, my anxiety starts to kick in and I just start thinking of my to do list. And so I am wondering if this little shift that I'm going to make is going to help me kind of reset my mind on thinking about what I actually got done rather than that rumination and stress over the things that didn't get done.
And I'm planning to do this in my journal that, you know, many of you know that I am a journaler. So maybe you're going to add this to your one second journal or your regular journal, or you just do it on a sticky note. Or maybe you open up a note in your phone and you just write it right there. Maybe you don't even write it down. Maybe you just think it at the end of the day, maybe what you do to kind of close out the workday, some sort of ritual to put a bow on the day, like pausing to take a few deep breaths, maybe just sitting in silence for a minute, closing your eyes and just think about, “Huh, here are all the things that I accomplished today.”
Start with three. As I said, you can do more, you can do less, but think personally, think professionally, they can be big, they can be small. I mean, it could go right on your list that you made your bed. I'm a big believer in making my bed. The minute I get up in the morning so that I know no matter how the day goes, I have accomplished one thing, big fan of that. Maybe you drank the stupid water. Maybe you are proud that you actually sat down and you ate lunch. Maybe you got things graded that you needed to get done. Maybe you made the parent phone call that you needed to make. No matter what it is, big, small, personal, professional, anything in between, I just want you to make a note of it.
I suspect that if we commit to writing down three things that we might get on a roll and we write down more than that. And if so, I think that is awesome. You might get to a place where you're going to be looking for unique things each day. So here's what I'm kind of predicting might happen. What happens to us when we start a gratitude list?
So, oftentimes when we start a gratitude list, we find ourselves kind of getting stuck in a rut and we write the same things over and over and over again. And I kind of suspect that I might fall prey to that with this list. And so as many of you know, what I've done to adjust my personal gratitude list is I write down three to five unique things that I'm grateful for within the past 24 hours. And so I want this list to be really specific to things that we accomplished in these last 24 hours so that we pause and really think through what made this particular day unique. That might be a nice way for us to kind of resist. that urge to write the same things over and over again. But you know what? Quite honestly, if we write down every single day, made the bed, let's celebrate it.
I'm a big fan of celebrations and really giving ourselves kudos for even the small wins because those add up and what we know is our brain is just kind of hardwired to pay attention to the things we didn't get done. And if you are a to-do list, a regular, traditional to-do list maker like I am, what tends to happen is our brain just really gets focused on the things that we didn't get to cross off.
So I love this little twist. I'm going to try it this week and I offer it up to you as well. So again, to summarize, this week is about the reverse to-do list. So what I want us to do is, at the end of the day, I want you to think about at least three things that you accomplished that day and let's celebrate those and let's see what it does. And if it works, let's keep going and if it doesn't, we'll drop it and we'll try something new next week.
As always, I'm cheering so hard for you. Big, huge thank you to Adrienne, to Marzano Resources, to Solution Tree, and to you, my badass self care squad. Feel my hand on your back this week. Let's celebrate the things that we did get done.
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