If you are still thinking about goals or aspirations for the new year and have decided resolutions are not for you, here are some additional ideas: the “stop doing” list, the “no thank you” list and a “reverse bucket list.”
Stop-doing lists
Many of us, myself included, have to-do lists. Sometimes, like mine, there are more than 100 items on it. For others, maybe you’re able to keep it to a few dozen. If you’re tired of making to-do lists, perhaps you can engage your brain in a different way and create a stop-doing list.
Author Greg McKeown writes in his best-selling book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
What that looks like is going to be different for everyone. Maybe you will stop matching socks, or you’re going to stop saying yes to everything, or you’re going to stop skipping lunch to get in 15 more minutes of work. Maybe you will stop checking your phone 144 times a day, or maybe you’ll choose to stop playing one online game. Or maybe you’ll decide to just stop stressing about what everyone else thinks about you and just do what works for you.
James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits,” referred to the process Victor Hugo engaged in to “stop doing” everything else but writing:
He collected all of his clothes and asked an assistant to lock them away in a large chest. He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking any suitable clothing to go outdoors, he remained in his study and wrote furiously during the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks early on January 14, 1831.— James Clear, Atomic Habits
While I don’t personally recommend that method, it apparently worked for Hugo.
No-thank-you lists
In the same vein as stop-doing lists, maybe you want to write out a “no, thank you” list, or an anti-bucket list. On that list for me would be things like skydiving. No thank you. Also, eating cow brains. Tried it, don’t like it, won’t do it again. I don’t want to eat chocolate-covered grasshoppers, or really, insects of any kind (although I did try termites in Belize). I also don’t want to bury another child. We’ve already buried several and truly, universe, no, thank you.
I also have no plans to hike Everest (although I did make it to Pokhara, Nepal), go ice fishing, own a motorcycle, have a personal pool (paranoia about kids drowning makes that a strong no thank you), eat eggs with baby birds inside and while I love to travel, I don’t see myself heading to Afghanistan anytime soon. And, I will never, ever, go spelunking. Just the thought makes me shudder.
Sometimes, that “no, thank you” list could also include things you want to say no to and might need to practice: “No, thank you, Mom, I don’t want 50 years worth of National Geographic magazines.” Or, “I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.” Or, “You’re very kind, but no thank you.”
Reverse bucket lists
Finally, we come to the reverse bucket list. It’s a list of the things we’ve already done. Sometimes, we (and by we, I mean me) get so caught up in what’s next that we forget to appreciate what we have already done and checked off our bucket list.
Creating a reverse bucket list can be as simple as using Facebook’s “Year in Review” feature, or the “Top Nine” for Instagram. Some of these will be life-changing moments, but they don’t have to be. Did you teach a child to ride a bike? Yay, you! Did you teach a teen to drive? High five! (I couldn’t do it — I spent the one trip I made with our oldest learning to drive certain we would die any second.) Did you hit a milestone in your career, learn something new, try something new or meet travel goals to go someplace new every year?
At the heart of a reverse bucket list is gratitude and appreciation. A 2014 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology looked at what happened when people engaged in “grateful recounting.” Participants were randomly put into three groups — a control group, a “pride” group and a “gratitude” group. Participants in the gratitude group were asked to take some time every day for a week to write down three good things that had happened to them in the previous 48 hours and then also write about why they were grateful for those experiences. Researchers found a significant increase in a feeling of well-being for the gratitude group. They also found that gratitude amplifies memory and makes positive memories more accessible, and the subjective well-being of participants continued to climb well after the week-long study had concluded.
Personally, I think a reverse bucket list can be an antidote to imposter syndrome and self-doubt. Like Harry Potter seeing the Patronus he thought was his dad but was really himself, not only can we do it, but we already did do it!
Originally published in the Deseret News
