Why Use a Nightly Checklist?
Hi, I'm Liz Moser, and I'm a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach. Most of my clients commit to coaching because they hope to either add healthy habits to their lives or subtract unhealthy habits or some combo of those two.
One of the tools I highly suggest they adopt on their wellness journey, and that I use faithfully is a nightly checklist.
A nightly checklist is simply a spreadsheet that at the top lists the days of the week and written under each day are the habits you want to track. Every evening, either cross off what you've completed or circle what you missed. When you have a day where all your habits are X’ed, X the whole day, that feels great!
Some of the benefits of a nightly checklist are:
It represents what habits you are genuinely committed to adding in your life.
It makes your intention concrete.
And
Tracking new habits increases motivation by seeing in black and white what exactly you are accomplishing.
As I look back over my two years of nightly checklists, some habits have been on it the whole time. Such as:
making my bed in the morning
writing every morning and evening in my gratitude journal
writing in my 5-year journal every evening
morning meditation
Some form of a sleep habit. I’ve varied between tracking how many hours of sleep I got, to picking a specific wake time
and, finally, some movement or some form of exercise
Over the years, I've also used my checklist to record habits such as the:
Amount of time spent working-I'm self-employed, so it's up to me!
number of steps walked
amount of meals eaten out
time spent watching TV- a negative habit I want to limit
At one time, I had 24 items on my checklist now, I’ve winnowed it down to 12 items. I add, subtract, and edit the habits on my checklist as needed; as my life evolves.
So, let me ask you…
Do you currently use a nightly checklist or some other habit tracker?
If not, are you interested in giving it a shot?
I'm Liz Moser, a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach, and if you have any questions about this blog/vlog or if you have any questions about health or wellness, please email me at lizm@lizmosercoaching.com
