What about an "Already Done List"?

I am a list maker. I always have been. I've been told that many eldest children are in the habit of making lists. I find them very useful in keeping all manner of things straight and have long been in the habit of devoting entire notebooks to lists. I prefer the 7.5x9.5" Composition notebooks you can buy at the drugstore with the black and white deckled covers and with the nice tidy lined pages. (Though the ones pictured here are awfully adorable too. Check them out at Three Potato Four.)I usually recover them with something funky and get busy filling them with to do lists.

Sometimes I sort the lists by category: Cleaning, To Buy, Errands, Mending, Beauty, Money etc. Sometimes I sort them into "long term" and "short term" categories, or "artsy" and "fartsy" for fun and not so fun to do's. I make lists of movies and book and music to check out. I make wish lists, project lists, blog idea lists and when Christmas comes this list making soars into a whole new stratosphere.

But the thing about to do lists is that no matter how you sort them, and rewrite them, no matter how many items get a nice fat line through them, you never ever get to the end. To do lists are ceaseless, bottomless, interminable, constantly gushing up out of the infinite. No matter how much I accomplish (or fail to accomplish) new things are always sneaking on to my lists. That's life I suppose.

But today I was thinking to myself about the amount of energy I expand on these damn lists. Now, I'm not kidding myself. Obviously, list making is integral to my being, I seriously doubt I could give it up now. But perhaps I should start making "Already Done" lists instead. Think about it. This could be just as effective a means of measuring time and energy and give you the same swelling sense of validation as crossing something off the list.

I could list all the usual suspects;
"Laundry"
"Grocery Shopping"
"Bank"

But then there would also be all sorts of things on that would never make it onto a regular list.
"Went to yoga"
"Bought flowers at market."
"Enjoyed a beer and bowl of peanuts with my husband"

Just a thought.