Today, a dear and wise friend sent me the link to an episode of the podcast Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. Kate Bowler is a Canadian academic and writer, an associate professor at Duke University, and the author of several books, including her 2021 memoir No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear).

The episode of Bowler's podcast that my friend shared was an interview with Parker Palmer. Parker Palmer is an American author and educator. He has published a dozen poems, more than 100 essays and 10 books, including 2018's On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old.

Parker tells Bowler that he went through "three deep descents into clinical depression"—two in his forties and one in his sixties. His therapist recommended that Parker start keeping a journal. Palmer protested, saying that he was incapable of writing a sentence or reading a page; he "got lost in the very act of trying to articulate a thought or absorb a thought from the outside." His therapist clarified that he wasn't asking Palmer to keep a "lengthy discursive journal." Instead he was counseling Palmer to keep "a journal of tiny achievements." He advised Palmer to capture small accomplishments such as getting out of bed at 10:30 AM or riding his bike for 10 minutes. He insisted that if Palmer were to keep a journal of tiny achievements, he would find that he was getting up a little earlier on some days and riding his bike for a little longer on others. "Things are going to start feeling a little more normal from time to time," Palmer's therapist advised.

But adopting this strategy required that Palmer rethink his definition of achievement. Before his depression, he says, he was the kind of guy for whom achievement looked like "writing a new book, selling 100,000 copies, getting great reviews, being invited to give talks and workshops all over the country." That's how he had spent 40+ years of his life. He says that he had to recalibrate his sense of what an achievement was. At age 85, Palmer says that it's as important now as it was when he was in deep depression to recognize his tiny achievements.

Palmer describes the journal of tiny achievements as a tool—a tool that worked for him. For anyone facing challenges, I'll leave you with the same question that Bowler asks in concluding her interview with Palmer: "What is one tiny achievement you want to celebrate today?"