When ‘to-do’ becomes ‘ta-da’! Making lists for depressed people
As a Type A Virgo with a pathological need to be productive, I’m a lover of lists.
I have a system for my systems and I make plans to plan My Next Big Thing. Brainstorming sessions, tasks and reminders populate my Google calendar like daffodils in a spring field. My phone is filled with apps for lists, habit-tracking, social media monitoring, content management and even sleep hygiene. I have not one but three separate (yet distinct) apps for note-taking.
But as an anxiety-riddled medically-diagnosed depressed person, sometimes lists can do more harm than good.
I was using lists wrong
Last year my mental illness became so severe that I had no choice but to take an extended period of leave from work. This job was the best one I’ve ever had and it’s something I definitely did not want to jeopardise by letting my performance suffer. But, as my depression worsened, my ‘to-do’ lists grew.
This was inevitable, right? As my thoughts became more and more scrambled, it was more necessary than ever to put everything down on paper. If I forgot to jot something down, it likely wouldn’t get done.
And that’s, of course, what happened.
Apart from memory lapses that left a lot of my work incomplete, my progress also slowed considerably. I liken it to a computer loading more and more tabs. The more my brain tried to do, the harder it was to complete anything at all, even basic tasks. Every thought or task was a loading wheel of death.
Eventually one of my best friends pointed out that what I was doing wasn’t sustainable. Something had to give and if it wasn’t my job, it would have been me. So I followed her advice and took four months of unpaid leave (later to become seven, then to become a resignation). But I made the unfortunate mistake of itemising my recovery.
I decided that in place of my nine-to-five, my new full-time job was to fast-track my way back to full health. I made list after list of all the things I needed to do to become myself again. Exercise regimes; meal-planning and prepping healthy foods; life admin; catching up on previously neglected housework; picking up a new hobby to bring me joy; returning to the great leisurely love of my life, writing.
It was all on a list and almost none of it got done.
Even the most mundane of daily tasks can become a monumental feat in the midst of a depressive episode, as those of you who have dealt with mental illnesses will know. Depression drops you in a figurative pool of treacle and tells you to just ‘proceed as normal’, even though it now takes Herculean strength just to take a few steps. My lists didn’t understand this because I refused to accept it. So, once again, the tasks grew and my spirit crumbled.
I was convinced that I could bullet-point my way back to The Realm Of The Mentally Well and I turned out to be correct. At least, partially. But what I got wrong, was the nature of my lists.
I replaced ‘to-do’ lists with ‘ta-da’ lists
I cannot take credit for the brilliant idea that is a ‘ta-da’ list, nor can I point to the exact person responsible for said brilliance. The phenomenon made its way into my life via a comment on a YouTube video, but I believe it originates in the hardcore bullet journaling community.
In summary, a ‘ta-da’ list celebrates everything you have done rather than itemising things you have yet to do.
So instead of setting myself a list of tasks at the beginning of each day, I would just live my day as best I could, setting few or no expectations of myself. Then, at the end of the day, I would write a list of all my wins from the last twenty-four hours.
As anyone who struggles with mental illness will know, there are some days when just getting out of bed is a big win. So, on the ‘ta-da’ list it goes!
✔ Got dressed? That’s a win.
✔ Took your meds? Win.
✔ Went for a walk? Win.
✔ Answered a message or email? Win.
✔ Met a friend for coffee? That’s a big win.
✔ Cancelled plans because you knew you weren’t feeling up to it? You guessed it! That’s a win.
For me, a lot of getting through my lowest depressive spell revolved around retraining my brain to celebrate what I was able to do, rather than beating myself up for what I couldn’t do. These ‘ta-da’ lists gave me a much-needed shift in perspective and helped me to appreciate every small step I was taking in my recovery.
And naturally, as I learned to celebrate my progress, the list of wins became longer and longer and it was a glorious upward spiral. Truthfully, I credit these lists with a huge chunk of my recovery success. Retraining your brain out of toxic thinking is no small feat, but with daily repetition of calling out my wins, I learned to be kind to myself.
My current method: a multi-pronged list
This is also not a method I can claim to have established myself. In fact, this one comes from Struthless, and also landed in my lap through the same limitless Land Of Ideas: YouTube.
This strategy involves writing five lists:
♦ a ‘bare minimum’ list
♦ an ‘if I’m killing it’ list
♦ a ‘weekly to-do’ list
♦ an ‘ongoing life admin’ list
♦ and a ‘big picture’ list.
I think that’s fairly self-explanatory, but you can watch the video in full here if you want to learn more.
I adapted the strategy slightly to suit my own needs, so now my mega-list includes:
♦ a ‘bare minimum’ list
♦ a ‘preferably’ list
♦ an ‘if I’m killing it’ list
♦ a ‘tomorrow’ list
♦ a ‘someday’ list
♦ and a ‘done’ list.
For me, I found that the ‘if I’m killing it’ list was too far removed from the ‘bare minimum’ list so I needed another rung in between them. It’s almost like a traffic light system, with the top three lists going from ‘urgent’ to ‘not-so-urgent’ to ‘take-it-or-leave-it’.
And you know what? Some days, I actually colour-code within these list subsections as well. If it’s a day when I have a lot of small tasks to do, I colour-code each item based on whether it’s an errand I have to run out in the world, if it’s a household task or if it’s a task for which I’ll need my computer. Then I task-batch so I’m not hopping back and forth.
The ‘tomorrow’ list is reserved exclusively for time-sensitive tasks I can no longer do today (for instance, if I had ‘go to chemist’ on my ‘ideally’ list but the chemist is now closed, I move it to my ‘tomorrow’ list). ‘Someday’ is probably somewhere in between Struthless’ ‘ongoing life admin’ and ‘big picture’ lists. It’s made up of non-urgent tasks that I just need to keep somewhere in the back of my head. For instance, currently on my ‘someday’ list I have items like ‘prep stuff for charity shop’ and ‘build the IKEA piece of furniture sitting in the shed’. One day, they will move up to the ‘ideally’ list, but right now, I have more pressing priorities.
And of course, I keep the ‘done’ list so I can visually see my progress. I prefer physically moving items from one list to another rather than deleting them or marking them as done, just because it takes slightly longer to do. So this allows me a little longer to enjoy the triumphant feeling of having completed a task. Plus, it keeps my active lists more clean and less overwhelming.
And so!
Although I currently use my mega-list to guide me through each day, on days when I’m struggling I make an active effort to keep my tasks very basic. Usually, on a bad day, I’ll only manage to do the items on my ‘bare minimum’ list — but that’s okay! That’s what it’s there for, to remind me that some tasks aren’t essential so I can give myself a break on mental health days.
And on the really bad days, I abandon my mega-list altogether and swap back to a ‘ta-da’ list instead. This puts me back in the headspace of celebrating the efforts I put into tasks that would never make it onto any kind of ‘to-do’ list, like getting dressed or eating something.
So, if you’re like me and you love lists but have a tendency to get overwhelmed by them, I encourage you to try at least one of the above list-making practices. In particular, the ‘ta-da’ list can really make a difference for someone who’s struggling.
