In this solo episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast, host Angela Mondor (The Geeky Girl) introduces a practical end‑of‑day (EOD) journaling system designed to help entrepreneurs—especially neurodivergent ones—track what they actually accomplish each day and reduce self‑criticism. She explains that she uses two separate worksheets: a personal EOD journal and a business‑focused one. The process begins with habit‑stacking, linking the new journaling habit to an existing end‑of‑day cue (e.g., leaving the home office or getting ready for bed) and keeping the journal and pen in a consistent, visible location. Angela describes the “mind dump” style of entry, encouraging users to write down every task completed, regardless of size or category, without worrying about organization. Over a recommended 90‑day trial, the accumulated data can be highlighted, categorized, and reviewed to reveal true time allocation, identify income‑generating activities, and provide evidence‑based decisions about where to shift effort. She stresses that this practice reduces the internal “should” narrative, offers concrete proof of productivity, and can be revisited whenever a change in focus is needed. Angela also shares the specific journals she uses, provides links in the show notes, and invites listeners to join the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook community for further support.
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Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as The Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're gonna be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. Today I'm going to share something really cool with you, something that I've been doing for a very long time, and it has some origins in my history working in the accounting department or as an office manager. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and the cool trick I have for you at the end. Okay, let's get started. So if you've ever worked in accounting, you know what an EOD is. It's the end of day. If you've worked in even a restaurant or if you've had to do a cash out, you run an EOD report. So for me, my EOD, this journaling worksheet that I'm going to drop down here for you, it'll be in the show notes and below this video as well for you. This is a very powerful exercise that has been very, very helpful for me as an entrepreneur, especially as a neurodivergent entrepreneur. We tend to easily forget the things that we've done or the work that we've put in, and we tend to think that we can do 500 things every day and we only ever get done 3 or 5 or 10 of them, depending on the size of the items that are getting done off the list. So we definitely should all over ourselves a lot when it comes to this kind of stuff. So I actually have 2 different kinds of EOD journals that I do. This worksheet will lay this out for you. I have an EOD that I do that is personal and one that is in relation to my business. It was difficult for me to see what I had done every day. And so sometimes I'd get to the end of— a lot of times I'd get to the end of my day and go, I didn't get everything done. I feel crappy, or I feel— enter whatever word that works, makes sense for you. How do you feel when you don't get everything done that you thought you were going to get done, or you wanted to get done? We don't feel good. I feel shitty. There's lots of different emotions around not getting everything done. It is important to understand that you don't have enough time to get it all done. In the— at the end of the day, and there is always going to be a long list, whether you're neurotypical or neurodiverse, there's a long list. Neurotypical people tend to be able to practice time management better or understand how much they can and cannot get done in a day. As a neurodiverse human being or neurodivergent human being, sometimes this is more difficult. So this is where the EOD comes in. At the end of your day, You write down all the things you did do. Okay, we're focusing on what we did get done. So when we start to do this process, first of all, we're changing our habits because you've not probably not done an EOD before. And so you're going to have to remember to get that done. Now, this is just one more thing on a task list. I get that. But what I encourage you to do is do something that's called habit stacking. If you haven't read the book Atomic Habits yet, we'll put that link in the description here as well as the show notes so you can go get the book. Fabulous book on changing habits. One of the ideas in there is this concept of habit stacking. This is how do you take on a new habit by using the old habits you already have. So at the end of your day, what do you do? When does your day end and how does it end? Okay? That's the first question that I want you to ask yourself. So, for example, at the end of my day, 9 times out of 10, it's a, and leaving my office, because I do have an office inside my home, leaving my office and depending on the time of year, sometimes I go outside, sometimes I go sit in the living room, but I, I need to do a different activity other than or outside of what's happening in my office. I need a break. Okay, so you want to identify what is that marker because you want to do the EOD generally at that point. Now, I have done this where I do it at night before bed. Okay, I do my personal one at night before bed every night, but sometimes I fail. That's fair. But I do it for the most part every night. But when I was doing the EOD for business as well as for my personal life, I did them at night before bed because it was the— it was something that I could be consistent about, because at the end of my business day, sometimes I'm going to make supper, or sometimes I've got to go help one of the kids with something, or sometimes there's just too many variables in terms of how to do that. If you're the kind of person who at the end of every day you have to pack up all your things and put them on a shelf, or, you know, there's some kind of ritual to the end, then you can add your EOD there. But if not, if you're more hectic like I am, then you want to find the time when you can be consistent. So for me, the time was going to bed. So my EOD journal with a pen— you always want to make sure that the thing that you're, you're doing has everything that you need, right, when we're doing this change of habit. So these journals would be together with the pen on my nightstand so that I could easily do them. They're just right there. I have everything I need to make it happen. So this end of day was literally a mind dump, right? I call it like verbal vomit if you're writing, if you're saying it, which some people, they want to do it verbally. That's fine. You can do that. I like pen and paper though. So you just sort of like vomit your day all over the paper. It doesn't have to be organized. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be bullet journaled or dot journaled in any, it doesn't have to be pretty. It can be if that makes your wheels happy. It doesn't mine. I just like to kind of jot down all the things. You might not remember everything, but at least you just start to write down and say, here's what I accomplished today, and you just start writing and put things down. Oh, I forgot I actually vacuumed the living room before I went for my walk this morning, and oh, I started a load of laundry. I— oh, I sent out those emails to those people that I was trying to do. Oh, I created that automation for those people. I recorded X amount of videos. Just write down all the things you did do today. It doesn't have to be just business. Like I said, I included those other things too. Like, what, what did you do today? Put all the things down. This gives you a nice view. Then you can look at this paper and go, I did do a lot of things today. It might not have been all the things that you thought you'd get done on the to-do list, but you did do a lot of things. We made supper, cleaned up the dishes. I don't know all the things you did. Now you start getting a clearer picture of how you're spending your time. If you do this enough, I would encourage you to do it at least once a day for at least 3 months, a quarter. We should always do things for 90 days. There's some, there's some interesting math in there. I'm not going to get into it. But if you do this on a regular basis and start to write down all the things that you're doing, then you can see where you're spending your time. And now there's less shoulds. Now take this data however you want, because it is data. That's what it is. If you've written it out, you can highlight the things that you want to highlight. Maybe you want to highlight things in green that were income generating. Maybe you want to highlight things in blue that were non-work items. I don't know. You can take this data and look at it any way you want and see how does that look in terms of, you know, where you want to be spending your time. And you can start to make some decisions that are based on evidence of what's actually happened. What I have found is that when people do this exercise, when you do it for the period of time and you just keep going, if you miss a day, keep going. Keep going. You will find that you're gonna should on yourself less. It's not gonna be, oh, I should have done this, or I should have done that. You'll literally be able to go, well, I know I didn't get this done because my kid got sick and I had to take the time to take them to the doctor or whatever. You will see why things aren't getting done that you anticipated. Or, ah, you know what? My friend was in town and I really wanted to go for lunch with them. Of course I need— it was a 3-hour lunch because I needed to spend time with them. I only see them once a year, whatever the case may be. You get to actually see what's going on in your day and you have a much clearer picture. So, and then you're not shoulding on yourself quite so much about the things you should be doing. So, like I said, I do this for myself and I do it for my business. I do it more for myself these days than I do my business because I'm pretty clear about where I spend my time now. I've done this enough that now I know where the time gets spent and how I can justify it. Now, if I'm making changes and I'm like, I really need to change where I'm going. then I will go back to doing this EOD so that I can make these changes. And based on the evidence I see, I have done it, stopped it, and done it again when I'm trying to make some changes. Okay, so you want to habit stack, find the time that's the right time, put the books and the pens where it is that you need to go. For my personal journal, I actually have this really cute book. It's probably only about this big. I got it off Amazon. We'll put the link here. It's a 5-year journal. Each page is one day out of the year, but there's five entries, and it's cool to be able to say, "Hey, two years ago we did blah blah blah on this day," and it's just a cute little quick little thing about what happened during my day that's personal. So yeah, some of my business stuff sneaks in there once in a while, just because it's on my mind about things that I'm doing. But for the most part, the journal is is generally pretty business or pretty personal in terms of what's happening, and I love the snapshot. It's not a great big page. When I'm trying to do this for business in this end of day piece, I'm using a full piece of paper or a full journal book that's about like this big. Okay. And I can put a link to that book that I use there too. It's a beautiful book. I love it. Anyway, I want more room because I'm going to be jotting down all the things I got done during the day, regardless of whether it was personal or business. But the one I use for personal, like I said, it's just a cute little book and it's neat to see the years gone by of what the things I've done previously. So I'm excited to share this journal worksheet with you to give you some ways to see how you're spending time, to give you another tool in your toolbox to keep you from shitting on yourself. Because at the end of the day, when you're shitting on yourself, you're not actually giving yourself the praise and the encouragement that you could. And then using those things, you're gonna be way more successful. So I hope you enjoyed today. I hope you take the time to find the things that you do every single day and reward yourself. I mean, I don't know, do you take yourself out for a nice lunch? Do you let yourself go spend the afternoon in the sunshine, make yourself a nice cup of tea? Whatever the case may be, stop shooting on yourself so much. Give yourself some credit for all the stuff you're getting done, even if it's not all the things you wanna get done. And now you can go through and say, yes, I am very successful. I am busy. I'm getting things done. How do I shift my energy and time so that I can get some other things done that are still on my list? Now you have a tool that'll help you do that. I hope you have a fantastic week. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world? Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.
