Feel Better When You're Productive

HOW MANY TIMES have you stayed busy all day, but when it was over you felt like you didn't get much done? It feels like your actions are futile. All that work, all day long, and it feels like you did nothing worthwhile.

How can this even be possible? A hunter-gatherer wouldn't feel that way. At the end of the day, she or he has a pile of nuts or a dead deer to show for it. A bricklayer would probably never feel her actions are futile. When she started the day, the wall was only two feet high. Now it is eight feet high.

So why do you have that futile feeling? Because the modern world is full of invisible, hard-to-remember activities. Banking online, for example. And these activities are not in any way futile or unimportant. They can be very important. But they aren't visible. Once you finish your banking task, you close your computer and your desk looks exactly as it did before you started as if nothing has happened.

One possible way to improve your mood when you're productive is to make a list of what you do as soon as you finish it. It's like making a to-do list backwards.

So as soon as you finish your banking, write on a piece of paper, "did the banking." Maybe even put a checkmark next to it. Do the dishes, then write it down and checkmark it. Do that throughout the day, and then — and this is the most important part — before you go to bed, read over your list. If you do this, three things will happen:

1. You will no longer feel your actions are futile. You won't be demoralized by the feeling that you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

2. You will feel more motivated. When you see that you are in fact getting things done, and that many of those things are important to you and move you toward your goals in life, you are motivated to do even more.

3. You will discover how you spend your time. This will lead to an improvement in the use of your time without even really trying. At the end of the day you'll look at your list. Sometimes you'll see that many of the things you've done were not very important. You haven't really noticed that before because those activities have also been invisible.

Make a "done list" every day, adding to it every time you complete even the smallest task, and at the end of the day, look it over. This will go a long way toward counteracting the futility-inducing demoralization of modern life.