Because they enable us to settle our brains - especially when every thought is free floating.
If you relate to living with a hamster wheel in your brain, always running and making noise, especially when you are trying to rest, then keep reading.
The untamed thought life can be hijacked by the silliest unimportant annoyance or temptation blocking out everything else. Or it can be some nagging low level moan crouching in fog and calling you to drop everything to follow it down some rabbit hole.
Writing all this down in a list of some sort is a useful way to trap these distractors. It provides us some clarity to evaluate what we might be dealing with and where our best time and energy could best be expended.
In recovery one of the twelve steps is such a list. It’s number four. Unfortunately for many, Step Four is the most feared one of them all. This is a shame because it is powerfully liberating.
Step Four
Made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon
I have found that making my list prior to bedtime for the next day 's activities stops or at least slows down that hamster wheel. Great topic! Thank you!