All of us make lists from time to time. What groceries to buy. Gifts to purchase. Things to do. Feeling good when we write things down so that we don’t forget.
I have read about creating a list of what you have completed or done. That there are benefits to doing this. Ones I did not believe.
Recently I restructured my workflow from emails to a digital to-do list and decided to add a column for items that I complete. Because I am a visual thinker, boxes in a to-do list get dragged into the column when they are done. I can view my progress during the day as well as at the end of the day to judge how “good” a day it was. At the end of the day, I delete the items in the completed column giving me a clean start for the next day.
What’s interesting in doing this is just how motivating it has become for me. If there are not a lot of boxes in the column by early afternoon, I know that I have to “get going”. Also, it’s making me better focus on using any slack time to finish a smaller item that I can move to the completed column to add to my completions.
Being older, I don’t play video games nor do I readily believe in “gamification” (where you make an experience into a game). I must admit though, making my “completed” list longer, feels just like a game. One that I would like to win daily, giving me a better chance of moving my life forward, one box at a time.