When Questian Telka texted Nancy McClelland a photo of her newly framed diploma, she couldn’t help but undercut the moment. “I know it’s not a big deal because everyone has one,” she wrote, “but I never thought that I would actually do it.”
This degree took multiple attempts and years to complete. She’d been chasing the goal and finally crossed the finish line. And her first instinct was to shrink it.
Nancy wasn’t having it. “It’s actually a really big deal,” she fired back. “To say that it’s no big deal is silly. It’s a big deal because everyone else has one and you didn’t.”
That text exchange became the seed for the season two finale of She Counts, the real-talk podcast for women in accounting. Hosts Questian and Nancy brought on Valerie Heckman, accountant community manager at OnPay and keynote speaker, to dig into a concept that started as a single line in Valerie’s presentation at Scaling New Heights and became the thing everyone wanted to talk about afterward: the ta-da list.
Women in Accounting Are Wired to Overlook Their Own Wins
Valerie has spent nearly 15 years working alongside accountants and bookkeepers. She’s not an accountant, but she’s watched the profession long enough to spot patterns that run deep, especially among women.
“Very high internal standards,” Valerie said, naming it plainly. “The goal is getting things done, getting things done right, solving big problems, and staying on top of deadlines.”
That’s what makes accountants exceptional. “I think that can also come with a lot of focus on what’s left undone,” Valerie said, pointing out the shadow side. “Your brain is always managing, ‘Okay, we got this thing done, but now we’ve got to do this.’”
Nancy recognized herself immediately. “You just described my brain when I go to bed at night. I don’t go, ‘Oh, look at everything I did today.’ I go to bed and think, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t get this, that, and the other done today.'”
Then there’s the self-effacing reflex Valerie has heard countless times. “Oh, well, this is just what I do. I’m here to help. It was nothing.”
The problem compounds over time. When you only focus on what’s undone, Valerie explained, “We get very critical of ourselves. We start comparing ourselves to others. We start doubting ourselves.”
She spoke from personal experience. Before discovering the ta-da list, Valerie was burnt out, although she didn’t fully recognize it then. “I was on that constant hamster wheel of getting things done, but not necessarily feeling like I accomplished anything.” She’d write everything on post-it notes, stick them on the wall, and tear them down as she completed tasks. But every day brought more post-its. The wall was never clear.
“This is not a cure for burnout,” Valerie was careful to add. “I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna or suggest we’re fine if we just focus on the good things. Absolutely not.” But it can be one tool in your toolbox.
What is a Ta-Da List?
The concept came from Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where it was mentioned almost in passing. A ta-da list runs alongside your to-do list but captures the opposite: what you got done, plus anything that enriched your life.
“You still need to-do lists,” Valerie emphasized. “Sometimes people get confused. They think I’m saying don’t keep a to-do list. No.” The ta-da list is the complement that captures what the to-do list doesn’t show you.
To prove the concept works, Valerie asked the hosts to name three ta-da moments from the past week.
Nancy had one instantly. She’d repotted two plants in her garden. Questian struggled. “Three things? That’s, uh…” The difficulty was the point. When she finally landed on something, it was huge. She and Nancy received their trademark for She Counts that week, after nearly a year of applications and responses.
“Circle the one you’re most excited about,” Valerie instructed. Nancy deliberately chose the smallest, the plants. “Because the small things are the big things,” she explained.
Valerie validated the choice immediately. “That’s such a great example because it’s something you did for yourself. Those are the most important things to celebrate. You actually stopped the busyness of life and did something for your own enjoyment.”
For Valerie, keeping a ta-da list in her planner with pen and paper made things tangible. But she’s seen people use voice recordings, photos, or digital notes. The method matters less than consistency.
What shifted for her went beyond feeling better. She felt more grounded, more capable. She started recognizing effort, not just outcomes. But the most surprising discovery was what was missing. Personal goals she’d been announcing every January but never pursuing became impossible to ignore. Speaking on more stages was one of them, and the gap in her data pushed her toward that Scaling New Heights keynote.
The list isn’t just a nightly ritual either. “On a bad day, I can look back at the ta-da list and be like, I’ve been there before. I’ve done this before. I am capable.”
Nancy was floored. “So you’re not just making this list before you go to bed. You’re going back and looking at these lists when you’re having a bad day.”
That’s the resilience piece. It’s documented proof of your own competence, waiting for exactly when self-doubt shows up loudest.
The Magic of Sharing Your Ta-Da’s
The practice transforms when you let other people in on it.
An accountant named Nancy Jacobson approached Valerie at an event with a story that made her tear up. Jacobson started doing ta-da moments with her son at dinnertime. “I ask my son about his day and what his ta-da moments are. Then I share mine and we talk about it as a family. It’s made us closer.”
There’s also Ali Szymanski’s story. Nancy’s right-hand woman at The Dancing Accountant emailed Nancy when she completed her first wage reconciliation. “I know this is silly, but…” she’d written. It wasn’t silly. It was a ta-da moment worth celebrating.
Valerie suggested teams open meetings by asking, “What’s one good thing that happened in the last week?” One group she worked with realized they always jumped straight into tasks, everyone already overwhelmed before the first agenda item.
The conversation turned to something that made everyone laugh: gold stars. “We grew up being very motivated by gold stars and scratch-and-sniff stickers,” Valerie said. We don’t have to stop giving them to ourselves just because we’re grown ups.
Nancy had proof this works. During a weight loss journey, she used an actual sticker chart with foil stars. Her husband Mark offered to make an Excel version. She told him that was nice, but she needed real stars on real paper. She lost 20 pounds and kept most of it off for over a decade.
But celebration doesn’t mean ignoring struggle. “Gratitude doesn’t have to cancel out your struggle,” Nancy said. “It doesn’t mean you are not also struggling.” You can be drowning in a software transition during tax season and celebrate that someone helped you at 10 p.m. on Zoom. You can be exhausted and notice that your repotted plants look beautiful.
Your Ta-Da List Starts Tonight
Valerie’s keynote slogan crystallized the whole concept: “Less to-do’s, more ta-da’s.”
If your days are so packed with tasks that there’s no room for anything worth celebrating, something needs to come off the list. As Valerie put it, “Mick Jagger does not tune his own guitars. What are the things that only I can do?”
Here’s what you can do starting today:
- Write down three things tonight. What did you accomplish or what enriched your life today? If you can only think of one, that’s fine. The difficulty means you need this.
- Circle the smallest one. The little things are the big things, whether that’s repotting plants, calling difficult clients, or making it to the airport on time.
- Keep old lists. On bad days, they’re proof of your competence.
- Notice what’s missing. The gaps reveal goals you keep announcing but never pursue.
- Share your ta-da’s. Text a friend. Open team meetings with wins. Say names out loud when people help you.
- Make room for more. Eliminate, automate, delegate. Create space for things worth celebrating.
For women in a profession that measures value in accuracy and completed tasks, learning to see (and say out loud) what’s going right is an act of resistance against the voice that says “it’s nothing.”
It’s not nothing. Frame the diploma. Put the gold star on the chart. Ta-da!
Listen to the full episode to hear Valerie’s live exercise and the Marge Piercy poem that closed the show. Then head to the She Counts LinkedIn page and share something you celebrate that might seem silly to others.