A Two-Minute Bedtime Habit That Measurably Reduces Burnout

M​y kids are grown now, but my favorite parenting moment, hands down, used to be at bedtime, when they would tell me about “three good things” that happened during their day. We started when they were just toddlers in 2005, when Martin Seligman published a study showing that this exercise increased happiness and decreased depression.

I loved hearing about the bright moments of their days: the substitute teacher who let them draw, a funny thing that happened at lunchtime, a new friend on the playground. Often, when they were really little, their first good thing would be “right now.”

Over time, I could see how it helped my kids notice, savor, and really appreciate the positive in their lives. I recommended the ritual to thousands of parents on television, in my books, and on a great many stages.

But I recently realized that I was missing half of the original research-based exercise.

In the original study, participants didn’t just recount three things that went well that day; they also answered the question: “Why did this good thing happen?” Somehow I missed that question.

What happens when overwhelmed people do it

Researchers at Duke asked health care workers, whose epidemic burnout rates are well documented in the medical literature, to recount “Three Good Things” for just 15 days. Their emotional exhaustion, depression, and happiness all improved, and the number of participants with depression dropped from 37% to 19%. Incredibly, after just fifteen days of practice, these improvements remained detectable a year later.

The same team also tested a 10-day app-based program built around Three Good Things. This time, burnout among healthcare workers was lower than in the control group, and the improvements also persisted a year later. The “Three Good Things” exercise isn’t a miracle cure for exhaustion and overwhelm, but it’s a quick, enjoyable practice that makes a measurable difference in incredibly depleted people.

Notice, explain, savor

Long before he launched the positive psychology movement, Seligman studied the opposite of happiness, and his research produced one of psychology’s most enduring ideas: how we habitually explain the causes of good events in our lives shapes our mental health. People prone to depression tend to explain good events away as having fleeting, one-off causes that had nothing to do with them; they think it was just a fluke or dumb luck. Optimistic people, on the other hand, explain the good events as things they helped cause, and therefore could make happen again.

Researchers call this “explanatory style,” and it’s reliably associated with mental health. The second question in the “Three Good Things” practice (Why did that good thing happen?) is a way of rehearsing an optimistic explanatory style by noticing what you had to do with making good events happen.

There are many research-tested gratitude practices that skip that second question, so we know that noticing good things alone does do something. But the original protocol, with both questions, has stood the test of time.

The Duke researchers also added a third step. After participants wrote down each good thing and their role in it, they picked the positive emotion that best fit how they felt about it, building a brief moment of savoring into the practice itself.

Savoring is the deliberate act of staying with a good feeling a beat longer than it would naturally last. Naming an emotion holds it in your attention, which stretches it. The Duke participants described the practice spilling forward: they began scanning for good things all day long, sometimes thinking, “This can be one of the three good things I’ll write about tonight!”

Restored and revised

I’m still such a big believer in having a regular, daily gratitude practice that I built the Three Good Things exercise into my new Annosa app, which you can access through my group coaching program. There, you can jot down answers to two quick questions: What went well today? And what was your role in it? Then you pick the feeling that came with it, a built-in moment of savoring, exactly as the Duke protocol does.

That second question is the why-step, sharpened by researchers: the Duke studies asked participants, “What went well today, and what was your role in making it happen?” It asks specifically for our contribution, helping us practice an optimistic explanatory style. The dinner turned out well because you tried the new recipe. The hard conversation went okay because you stayed calm. Your friend felt loved because you remembered to call.

If this makes you squirm a little because writing down your own role in good things feels like bragging, I’d gently point out that you probably have no such hesitation cataloging your role when something goes wrong. We’re not adding self-congratulation. We’re correcting an asymmetry I see constantly in the women I coach, who often deflect credit and absorb blame.

How to practice tonight

Before bed, write down three things that went well today. Small things count. For each one, add a sentence about why it happened, and name your role in that. Then name the positive feeling that came with it, such as joy, gratitude, hope, pride, amusement. That’s it. The whole thing takes a couple of minutes. Duke’s team recommends doing it for 14 consecutive days, after which you can expect to see benefits begin to accrue.

My kids are grown now. But if I could go back to those bedtimes, I’d ask them more questions: What did you do to make that happen? And how did it make you feel?

Even without those questions, though, a third of the practice was often the best thing that happened to me all day. What was my role in making that good thing happen for myself? Simply that I asked about my kids’ 3 good things. Even now, twenty years later, those memories bring me joy.