✅ The Done List
At this point in the summer you probably have a number of different tasks that you are focused on completing. Some of them are substantive (e.g. “Draft a memo on defenses to removal in Iowa”), others are interpersonal (e.g. “Schedule lunch with Sam who sits on my floor”), and others don’t relate to your summer job at all (e.g. “Get back to the gym” or “schedule 3L classes”). As a result, I’d be shocked if you are not keeping some kind of “to do list”—and if you aren’t this is your reminder to stop storing your tasks and projects in your brain and to start storing them instead in some sort of external system (check out the past issue on “Important v. Urgent” for more tips on how).
But I was listening to Oliver Burkeman’s powerful little book Meditations for Mortals over the long weekend and he proposed what I think might be an equally powerful tool to start using this summer (I am going to try it myself):
A Done List.
It reminds me a little of the suggestion I made in one of the earliest issues of the newsletter: to track experiences using “The Post-It Method.” But where the Post-It Method focused on the big stuff—the memorable, resume-worthy moments—a Done List brings the same energy into the everyday.
The idea is dead simple: at the end of each day (or as you go), write down what you actually did. Not what you meant to do. Not what you should have done. Just what you did. Emails sent. Conversations had. Pages written. Coffees completed. Workouts survived.
Even the small things. Especially the small things.
Burkeman’s point is subtle but profound: so much of our anxiety doesn’t come from what we are doing—but from what we think we’re not doing. The to-do list is infinite. The done list is real. That’s the shift.
The to-do list never ends. It can become a monument to ambition but also to guilt.
The done list, by contrast, is a record of reality. It focuses our attention not on how far we have to go, but on how far we’ve already come.
And let’s be honest: that’s usually more impressive than we give ourselves credit for.
This is an especially powerful practice to start right now. As a summer associate, you’re not just being evaluated—you’re evaluating yourself. And if your inner monologue is anything like mine was, it might sound like:
“Was that assignment good enough?”
“Should I have stayed later?”
“Do they think I’m smart?”
“What do they actually mean by ‘own the case’?”
The done list allows you (and forces you) to create a concrete record of all of the things that you’ve already done to answer these questions in ways that help you focus on how far you’ve come even if you have a good distance still to go. In other words, it builds confidence, not from self-congratulation, but from documentation. You’ll start to see the patterns of your own growth. And on the hard days (and there will be a few I promise) you’ll have something honest and solid to look at.
So try it. Start with a simple rule:
At the end of the day, list 5–10 things you did. That’s it.
Use a notebook, your Notes app, a fancy journal, whatever. You don’t have to share it. This is for you. I’ll be experimenting with this technique along with you!
Keep standing out,
Jonah
