Good news is available for those who love to making lists. According to evidence, making a list is healthy for your mental health in addition to being clean fun. That’s right: There are lots of reasons to keep checking those boxes.
Your First List
You might not recall making your first list, but it definitely happened about the time your scholastic obligations grew increasingly demanding in middle school. It’s possible that you had a ton of homework and had to balance many different assignments. It’s possible that you have a paper due in one class and an essay in another.
It’s also possible that your first list was made while prepping for summer camp: bathing suit, toiletries, bug spray, sunblock. Sound familiar? Maybe your camp even supplied your first list.
If camp wasn’t part of your childhood experience, at some point, you likely wrote a shopping list: toys wanted, groceries to pick up, clothes to buy, or books you needed for school.
Bottom line: When we have multiple tasks to organize, making a list is human nature.
The Power of To-Do Lists
People typically have 15 ongoing goals or projects at any given moment, which makes organization difficult, according to a Harvard Business Review article. To-do lists are crucial for organizing chores without overloading our memory with extra information and for following through on a plan of action. What’s more, we get a little burst of dopamine with every completed job.
Regarding lists, HBR senior editor Vasundhara Sawhney writes, “Essentially, when we create a roadmap to help us reach a goal, we are more likely to attain it and more likely to focus better on other areas of our work or lives in the interim.”
Today you’ll likely find lists in every home: on old-school Post-its (my favorite), scrap paper, or in the margins of newspapers or books. Smartphones can even make digital lists for you. But even if you’re not a fan of lists, you can barely get through a day without encountering them: above counters in fast-food restaurants What’s a menu but an oversized list?, store directories, cookbooks, or instruction manuals.
Are you headed to the airport? There are lists of incoming and outgoing flights that you’ll need to review. Getting in an elevator? There’s a list of floors and offices to eyeball.
Which raises an important question: Why are lists so popular?
Why We Love Lists
Lists are therapeutic; they help you to plan, set goals, or consider your options. Here are 5 primary reasons why they are good for your mental health:
- Lists help you plan and structure your time.
- Lists can give you focus, direction, and purpose.
- Completed tasks foster a sense of accomplishment, boosting self-confidence and esteem.
- Lists feed our ambition to achieve more.
- Lists can lower anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms by helping you organize your thoughts and remember tasks.
Lists are a great method to stay organized, whether you prefer bullet points, boxes, or numbers, digital or printed versions.
