Why You Should Make a Reverse Bucket List

About 15 years ago, in a small act of rebellion, Sinek started keeping a reverse bucket list: a log of all the wonderful things he’d already experienced, like the time he saw a complete rainbow instead of just part of one.

Sinek keeps his list on his phone, where he sometimes stumbles across it while searching for something else. Then he gets sidetracked revisiting his own life and remembering experiences he’d forgotten about. “It’s joy scrolling,” he says. “Why shouldn’t I get credit for these things that showed up organically in my life?”

Here’s how to take stock of the big milestones and small moments worth remembering—and give yourself a chance to enjoy them all over again.

A reverse bucket list works because it interrupts one of your brain’s most stubborn habits: always looking ahead to what’s next instead of pausing to appreciate what’s already happened. “So much of daily life is focused on the next goal, the next milestone, or the next thing we haven’t done yet,” says Rachel Needle, a psychologist in West Palm Beach, Fla. That translates into rarely stopping long enough to notice “everything we’ve already experienced, survived, learned, or built.”