Hi, I have anxiety and I'm wondering, does list writing help you to feel like you have your day set out and can accomplish things? Does it help self esteem in your opinion?
Hi! I also have anxiety, so I feel where you are coming from; I started the lists to help with my anxiety when I was in school.
The answer is mostly yes. List writing is how I work around my anxiety by organizing my days, setting clear goals, working against my forgetfulness and procrastination (thereby precluding anxiety-triggers like last minute panic when I’m unprepared for something or finding out I missed a deadline, etc.) and providing a visual and objective cue for accomplishment. Sometimes if I don’t do everything I thought I could, I can feel a bit down about it, but see below for more on that.
The way I organize my lists, which you can read about in my “to do lists” tag, allows me to track very specific goals for the week on the same list I use to track long-term projects. So if I have to, for example, go to the dentist on Wednesday, I would put “Dentist appt” under Wednesday, and probably also under “Self-Care.” That aligns it with a day it Must be done, and also the reason why I am doing it. And I get to cross it off in two places. So yes, it does help me manage my days and it definitely helps me accomplish things.
WRT accomplishment specifically, I write my lists in a OneNote document on my laptop, and everything at the start of the week is written in a color, and then as I do things, I change the thing to black and strike through it. That way I can see, visually, my accomplishment, and every time I go back over the list, I can see all my accomplishments all week.
The biggest “trick” to the list is that I have to begin on the basis that I can’t accomplish everything on it, because I purposefully write the list to be impossible to complete. For some people and especially folks who are new to this method, this can cause anxiety; I’ve been using this method long enough now that it only fosters my sense of self-forgiveness and care when I can’t accomplish everything. In that sense, it does very much help me with self-esteem and self-confidence. Very much so. And because I write the list with extreme specificity (never “clean the flat” but rather “clean the bedroom,” “clean the bathroom,” etc, if I can’t accomplish one big thing like clean the whole flat, I can still probably do one little thing, like clean the bathroom. So I still get an accomplishment boost and to “celebrate” doing parts of things when I can’t accomplish the whole shebang at once. If my list is beginning to overwhelm me, I’ll just delete things right off it. If it’s not necessary, I can delete it or move it to a different document to save for later, and then a smaller list can sometimes help manage a sudden upswing in anxiety for me.
I’ve definitely talked about the method more in the to do list tag so definitely check it out! I recommend starting listing projects small and don’t be afraid to change the method/organization of listing to suit yourself and to work around your anxiety.
