Why you should write down your daily accomplishments

I love making lists.

There are the everyday, get-shit-done lists: lists of chores, grocery lists, tasks for work lists.

Then there are the fun lists: Places to travel, scary movies to watch during October, things to make/do/eat during the spring.

And then there’s my “things I got right” list. This is not a to-do list but a celebrate-good-choices list. It’s probably the most important list of all.

Celebrate your wins wherever you find them

More about me (since you asked): Despite all my list-making organization, I’m a big procrastinator. Sometimes this procrastination takes the form of hours spent sitting on the couch consumed by Netflix.

But sometimes it looks like this:

“I need to write a blog post. I should go do that. Wow, I have a lot of pairs of socks. Why are there socks everywhere? Socks should all be in one place. Why are there socks mixed in with the other stuff? Let’s just take all the socks out of the drawer, refold them, then organize them by color in the drawer. Underwear too…”

Until I have a completely organized underwear drawer.

And even though organizing my drawers was never on my to-do list, and I still haven’t written that blog post, I’m going to chalk this up as a win.

No win is too small

In that weird little sock scenario, I didn’t get done what I intended to do, but I still did something worthwhile.

My “things I got right” list is full of stuff that isn’t necessarily on my to-do lists, but that still needs to be done:

• Walked to work instead of driving

• Ordered cottage cheese instead of curly fries

• Washed dishes AND put them away

• Bought only the stuff on my shopping list at Target

I write down these daily accomplishments in a notebook that’s separate from my trusty planner.

It’s bright pink, and I write with a pen that’s decorated with the head of Sulley from “Monsters Inc” (it’s less gruesome than it sounds).

Since this list is all about celebrating wins, I make documenting those wins as fun as possible.

[caption id=”attachment_4934” align=”aligncenter” width=”300”] Sulley congratulates me on another day full of win[/caption]

At the end of the day, I take note of the stuff I didn’t do, because it becomes stuff I have to do the next day, and then I can celebrate the things I got right.

It makes me feel good that even if I didn’t accomplish every task on my to-do list, I still had a day full of wins.