The List I Made Yesterday (That Saved Today)
"What If Self-Care Looked Like a List?"
Learn a simple evening self-care practice that helps you approach each day with more intention, clarity, and grace. Discover how a thoughtful nightly list can support mindfulness, spiritual growth, and a more attentive life.
When Yesterday-Me Showed Up for Today-Me
I woke up last Tuesday the way I wake up most days…like a piece of toast popping out of the toaster (yes, really). Eyes open, mind already running, a dozen ideas and intentions pinging around before my feet even hit the floor. The morning light was soft and kind. My energy? Already in fifth gear.
And that's exactly the problem.
Because when I wake up like that - full of momentum and ready to go - I can easily barrel straight into the day and realize by noon that I've been busy without being intentional. I've answered emails, handled the urgent, moved fast. And the things that actually mattered? Still waiting.
But last Tuesday was different. Before I'd even reached for my phone, I remembered: I had made a list the night before.
Yesterday-me had already done the slow thinking. She had sat down with a cup of tea and a quiet ten minutes, and she had written out what today needed to hold. Not a massive productivity dump. Not a color-coded digital system. Just a small, handwritten list (the kind that fits on a sticky note) that said: get the dirt, pick up the flowers, tend the tea garden, take some time to journal.
That list was waiting for me like a small gift. Not a remedy for exhaustion. A tether. A way of saying: here's what actually matters today, before the momentum sweeps you somewhere else entirely.
The Weight of Waking Up Behind
Maybe you know this feeling. You wake up and you're already behind. It’s not because you’re unprepared, it’s because life is full and your brain is not exactly a gentle morning companion. There's a low-grade anxiety that hums underneath the coffee-making and the school lunches and the getting out the door. A sense that you're scrambling to catch up to a day that already started without you.
We talk a lot in wellness culture about self-care. And I love the idea of it, I really do. But so much of what gets labeled as self-care feels like it requires a perfect morning: a 5 AM alarm, a meditation cushion, a green smoothie and a journaling practice that somehow produces both insight and beautiful handwriting. If you're laughing, same.
What I've been learning - slowly, imperfectly, in the middle of real life is that soul care and self-care don't always look the way we think they should. Sometimes they look like ten minutes the night before, a pen, and a willingness to be kind to the version of yourself who will wake up tomorrow.
A Small Practice of Intention: The Evening List
Here's what I've started doing, and I want to be clear: this is not a productivity system. It's not a life hack. It's not another thing to optimize. It's a small act of intention - a practice of interior attentiveness that I've come to think of as spiritual direction for my own daily life.
At some point in the evening, I take five or ten minutes to write a short list for tomorrow. And I mean short. Not everything that needs to happen in the next week or a master plan. Just the things that matter most for tomorrow, written out simply and honestly.
The list isn't only practical. It holds everything: the errand I need to run, the creative project I've been putting off, the conversation I want to make space for, the quiet thing I need for myself. It might say: Finish the blog (necessary for my business), get the dirt for the garden (that’s for my project), journal (that’s time for myself & reflection), call Nancy to see how she’s doing (that’s intentional connection).
What I'm doing when I write that list is not just organizing my tasks. I'm practicing noticing. I'm paying attention to what the day actually needs, and what I actually need inside of it. That kind of attentiveness, that small, daily act of interior listening, is at the heart of what contemplative practice and spiritual direction have always pointed me toward.
Yesterday-me is doing the work of discernment so that today-me doesn't have to sprint past it. I see it as a small gift. A genuine, real, no-retreat-required gift that I can give myself any evening of the week.
Blueberry Matcha and a Thrift Store: What the List Actually Did
Okay, let me tell you about the tea garden day, because this is the part that still makes me smile.
I had been wanting to build a little tea garden in my yard. Nothing grand. Just a corner of the yard that would be a little sanctuary, a place of beauty and intention. It had been on my heart for weeks, and I kept pushing it off because it felt like something I'd get to when things slowed down.
One evening I put it on the list. Get dirt. Get flowers. Tend the tea garden. Simple. And because it was on the list, the next morning I woke up full of my usual energy, ready to let my mind run wild but then I knew: today is the day I do this.
I was genuinely in the middle of getting ready to head out for supplies when a wonderful friend called. And here's the thing: because I had my list, because I already knew the shape of my day, I could actually say yes. I didn't feel that familiar knot of "I can't, I have too much to do." The list had already held the day. I knew what was in it. I knew what could bend.
The list wasn't a cage. It was more like a map - one I could fold up and put in my pocket the moment the day offered me something better than what I'd planned.
I said yes.
We ended up at a nursery together, which was already delightful. And then somehow, as afternoons with good friends tend to go, we were sipping blueberry matcha, poking around a thrift store, laughing over the very random selection of items we could find and a few things that were actually kind of perfect. I still came home with the dirt and the flowers I needed for my tea garden. I ended up with my hands in the dirt, planting things, tending a small space of beauty that I had been meaning to tend for months.
Soul Care Doesn't Require a Perfect Morning
In my work as a spiritual director and coach, I sit with people who are hungry for a richer interior life but who feel like that kind of depth is somehow out of reach on a Tuesday. They want presence and attentiveness. They want to feel less like they're just moving through their days and more like they're actually living them, noticing them, inhabiting them.
And one of the things I've come to believe deeply through spiritual direction, through contemplative practice, through my own daily fumbling toward a more attentive life - is that soul care often lives in the ordinary. It's not always a silent retreat or a two-hour morning routine. Sometimes it's ten minutes the night before with a pen and a piece of paper, asking yourself:
What does tomorrow most need? What do I most need inside of tomorrow?
That question is a spiritual practice. The noticing it requires, the honest attention you have to bring to it, the willingness to see your own life clearly and in its actuality and with compassion…that's the interior work. That's what contemplative tradition has always pointed toward: not escaping the ordinary, but finding God and grace and meaning right inside of it.
The list is just the form the practice takes. What lives underneath the list is attentiveness and intention. A kind of self-directed spiritual direction that says:
I see you, tomorrow-me. I'm going to take care of you.
Why This Practice Works (Even When Nothing Else Does)
I want to name something directly, because I think it's important: this practice works not because it makes you more productive. It works because it's an act of love toward yourself.
When you sit down the evening before and make a thoughtful, honest list, you are saying to tomorrow-you:
I see what you're walking into.
I want you to have what you need.
I'm going to do the slow thinking now so you can move with purpose, not just speed.
That's self-care. Not the spa-day version (though truly, no judgment, I love a good spa day), but the deeper version. The version that says: my interior life matters. My experience of my own day matters. I am worth a few minutes of intentional thought.
And here's what I've noticed: when I do this consistently, even imperfectly, even just three or four evenings a week, I wake up different. There's still the energy. There's still the full day ahead. But there's also a small thread of grace waiting: a sense that someone was looking out for me. (That someone was me, the night before, but still. It counts.)
The spiritual direction tradition talks a lot about accompaniment - the idea that we walk alongside each other in the journey toward a more attentive, more whole life. Yesterday-you can accompany today-you in that same way. It's a small, quiet, genuinely beautiful form of self-accompaniment.
How to Try It Tonight: A Simple Guide
If this is resonating with you, I want to give you something you can actually do tonight. Not a system, not a framework, not a looooong instagrammable self-care ritual. Just an invitation.
Find five to ten minutes. Whether that's after dinner, before bed - whenever there's a pocket of quiet. Get something to write with and something to write on. (I love paper for this, though your notes app works too. There's something about handwriting that feels more like a personal letter to yourself, but do what you'll actually do.)
Ask yourself:What does tomorrow-me need the most? Sit with that for a moment before you start writing. Notice what comes up - the practical things and the less practical things. The errand and the creative thing. The obligation and the joy. The item you've been avoiding and the one you're secretly looking forward to.
Write them down.
Keep the list short enough to be real: five to six items is usually plenty. If you're writing twenty things, you're doing a different exercise. This one is about discernment, not documentation.
Then, before you close the notebook or put down your phone, take one more breath and ask: What does tomorrow-me most need from today-me? Maybe it's the thing you've been putting off for some time. Or maybe it's a permission slip to rest, written down where you can see it.
Leave the list somewhere you'll find it in the morning. On your nightstand, propped against the coffee maker. Wherever tomorrow-you will be when the energy kicks in and you want to know where to aim it.
A Gift from Yesterday-You to Tomorrow-You
I'm sitting in my tea garden as I finish writing this. It's small and a little unruly already, because things grow fast when they're tended (oh, is that a metaphor for your own growth?!) and there's a ceramic planter in the corner that I found on a detour with a good friend on a day when the list said "tend the tea garden" and the afternoon said "yes, and also this."
Yesterday-me made room for today-me to be here. To be in the dirt, to be present to something growing, and to have said yes to the detour without losing the thread.
That's what I want for you.
Not a perfect system. Not a flawless morning routine. Just the grace of a small, kind act of intention the night before - a few written words from yesterday-you to tomorrow-you that say:
I see you. I'm rooting for you. Here's what today holds.
What would it feel like to give yourself that gift tonight?
A Reflection Question for You
What does tomorrow-you most need from today-you?
Sit with that for a moment. Then write it down.
Maybe it's a reminder to reach out to someone you've been meaning to connect with. Maybe it's a creative project you keep shelving, a conversation worth having, or simply the reminder that you'll need patience, rest, or a little extra grace.
The practice isn't about creating another productivity list. It's about paying attention. Taking a few quiet moments the night before to notice what tomorrow might require and preparing to meet it with intention.
If this kind of reflection resonates with you, I'd love to walk alongside you. Through spiritual direction, contemplative coaching, and monthly reflections, I offer simple practices that help bring greater awareness, presence, and meaning to everyday life.
