The “didn’t do” mindset

when all you can think about is the things you didn’t do and how to overcome it

I’m in the fourth year of medical school and have spent the last few months traveling across the country to spend time with different OB/GYN residency programs. Applications for residency are in, interviews are done, and in less than 2 months, I will find out if I matched into a program and where I will spend the next four years training to become an OB/GYN physician. During this time of not much to do an lots of time to think something that has been coming up is what I am calling the “didn’t do” mindset.

What is the didn’t do mindset?

The didn’t do mindset is what happens when you have little control over a situation, leading to your brain ruminating on all the things you didn’t do. For me, it feels like a sense of anxiety that there was something I should have done for a better outcome that I didn’t do, kind of like the feeling you get when leaving for a trip where you think you might have forgotten something but you can’t remember what.

Outside of submitting my rank list, there is very little left for me to do. When I imagined what this time would be like, I thought I would feel a huge sense of relief. What has ended up happening is a feeling that there are so many things that I didn’t do that maybe I should have. The weird thing is, when I try to dive into what it could be that I didn’t do, I can’t come up with anything- which is why listing the things you “didn’t do” is step one for overcoming the didn’t do mindset.

Step 1: Write down all the things you didn’t do

Although there may be a few things that you wish you would have done to control a situation that feels out of your control, I’m willing to bet that there is much more that you did do than didn’t do. In doing this exercise myself, I tried to recount to my partner everything I was worried I didn’t do and at first my answer to him was “I can’t think of anything.” After thinking about it for a few minutes, I could come up with one or two things that I wished I would have done but it turned out that the things I came up with fit into one of two categories: things I couldn’t do at the time I wished I would have done them and things I later added to my to-do list that didn’t have an impact on the outcome.

Acknowledging Real Constraints

Things in the first category are things like wishing I would have arrived earlier to an away rotation so that I could be more prepared. However, arriving earlier was limited by the fact that I left right after my previous rotation ended and drove across the country to get to my next one leaving no time to arrive earlier. When you remind yourself of the very real constraints that stood between you and this unrealistic expectation you had, it allows you to release it.

The Never-Ending To-Do List

Things in the second category are things that are on our ideal to-do list but are things that won’t really impact the outcome of the situation you are hoping to control. For those of us who use doing things to avoid the feeling that we have no control over a particular situation, creating a never-ending to-do list is a perfect way to never have to face that feeling.

One thing on my never-ending to-do list were thank-you notes for people I had worked with for half a day or less. Would it have been nice to have given that person a thank you note? Absolutely. But would it have changed much for the amount of effort that I would have had to put in for every person that I worked with for such a short time? Likely not. These kinds of expectations are just ways to chase the carrot of perfection which is why step 2 helps us let go of it.

Step 2: Let go of the impossible to-do list with the Daily Highlight

The daily highlight is a tool that I learned from one of my favorite Youtubers, Ali Abdaal. You can find the clip where he talks about it here. Essentially, the daily highlight is a process that helps you narrow down your tasks to the ones that are the most important and release the guilt of not doing everything that you put on your to-do list.

You start by doing what Abdaal calls a “brain dump.” It’s exactly what it sounds like, you just write down all the things that you feel like you need to get done that day. From there, you choose one, yes, just one of these tasks that you will get done no matter what that day and you make that task your daily highlight by writing it at the top of your list with a check box (if that helps you as much as it helps me).

I have found this practice so helpful in learning the act of prioritizing. When I’m prioritizing what to do each morning in my head, I often gravitate toward the task that is the easiest or most interesting, leading to procrastinating the things that require more brain power or are less interesting. This also helps me relinquish all the pressure that I put on myself to get through an impossibly long to-do list each day. What generally happens is that I get the daily highlight and much more done each day but by only requiring myself to do one task, I create a feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day instead of a “didn’t do” mentality.

Step 3: Feel your accomplishments

The Daily Highlight helps with the didn’t do mindset in the day-to-day but what can you do if you are in my position, at the end of a long list of tasks still left feeling like you didn’t do enough? This is when feeling the gravity of your accomplishments is so helpful. When I first came up with this concept, I pictured sitting in front of my awards and diplomas and soaking up their magical rays as if that would make me feel like I had done something. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work and left me feeling weird and conceited instead.

What did work though was writing a thank you note to my past self, the version of me that was struggling to write my master’s paper while dealing with a break-up and attending to my practicum project in a local prison. I told her how thankful I was for all the work she was putting in, I wrote about where I was now and the places this degree had gotten me. I recognized how much she was struggling and I thanked her deeply for what she sacrificed for me. Doing this put me back in her shoes and reminded me how far I had come. As I was picturing all of the things I did in the past to get here, there was no longer space to think about all the things I didn’t do.

Existing is the only requirement

Remember that simply being here is an accomplishment on its own and that your responsibility as a human being isn’t to accomplish anything but rather, just to exist. While the “didn’t do” mindset is something that happens to all of us, I hope these tools can remind you of all the amazing things you have accomplished and help you create space to be truly proud of them.