Productivity Pointer: The Done List
No matter how robust your productivity system, you probably won’t use it effectively if you feel like a perpetual failure. And this is what hyper-focus on all your un-done to do’s can do to you. What you want instead is to tackle each day and week with confidence, optimism and reminders of past successes.
So, when you perform a weekly productivity review, don’t start by surveying everything that remains to be done. Instead, begin by celebrating your accomplishments over the past week.
If you do this regularly, you’ll probably find that even if you didn’t do all you set out to do during the prior seven days, you probably did a lot more than you realized — and they may not have even been things that were on your to-do list. For example, maybe the car broke down and you managed to get it into the mechanic. If that’s the case, add it to the done list.
Sometimes we beat ourselves up for not being productive while forgetting some of life’s challenges that cropped up along the way. And adding this context can be a useful reminder of why some things might be hanging around on our planner a little longer than intended.
It’s generally easier to build success on progress, so start paying more attention to just that. Make a habit of highlighting success to bolster your self-confidence, self-efficacy, self-esteem and productivity.
Give yourself the credit you deserve and a regular pat on the back by maintaining and reviewing a “done” list alongside all your to-dos.
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