One of the women on the Thomas Jefferson Education Facebook group recently shared her idea of a Victory List. Instead of a To-Do list, she focuses on writing down at the end of a day what she has accomplished. She said she likes to emphasize the people she wants to focus on rather the tasks she wants to accomplish.
My aunt also recommends this tactic of an I-Did list as healthier for our mindsets.
I love this idea because it is easy to look around us, whether on Facebook or Pinterest or blog posts or Instagram or real life, and choose to see what others excel at while discounting what we excel at. Then we heap recriminations on ourselves for not being fantastic at every single thing we see others doing fantastically well.
We may even become apologetic about our skills or self-doubting about the roles we fulfill. I see parents and homeschoolers in particular as two groups that constantly worry about whether they are doing the right things.
It is in this sense of a Victory List that I like to mention what we have done for homeschool on thus-and-such-a-day. The post is something to look back on, when necessary, to remind myself that we have done plenty of wonderful things. If it is a day to doubt what we have covered in math, I can look back at mathematical things we have done. If I start to wonder whether we do any art at all, I can remind myself of our art field trips, projects, or books.
Do you do a Victory List or an I-Did List? A daily To-Do list? Both? Neither?
I've done a "done" list before and it is really motivating to see at the end of the day all those accomplishments.
ReplyDeleteThe only real problem for me is this sounds like an end-of-the-day list and I am not good at consistently doing much of anything at the end of the day. :) But it would be really helpful for me to track in terms of homeschool. (We're not required to by law.) I do write down every single book we finish on lists for each person.
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