How to Keep Track of Your Accomplishments
So you get credit where credit is due.
If you do great work and no one knows about it, did it really happen?
Raises and promotions are contingent on people knowing your accomplishments.
When performance evaluations come around, it's your time to take credit for the work you did throughout the entire year, not only what you accomplished recently.
How can you take credit when you don't remember everything you did?
The solution is to have an Accomplishments Tracker.
What is an Accomplishments Tracker?
It's a simple way to track and write down your wins, accomplishments, and impact.
You can use any technology you want: Pen and paper, Notes app, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Notion, Excel, Trello, etc.
The method doesn't matter.
What matters is that you write things down.
What do you track?
Track anything you're proud of, want recognition for, or think is proof that you're ready for a raise or promotion:
- Projects completed
- Presentations given
- Recommendations adopted
- Work that was automated
- Process improvements
- Decisions made
- etc.
It's an endless list.
It's best to track too many things rather than not enough.
When you go through your list later, you'll notice which accomplishments were most impactful.
How do you track your accomplishments?
You can track many attributes of your work, but I have a short list:
- Date. The date the work happened or when something was completed. It doesn't need to be precise, you just want to know what was done at what point in the year (beginning of the year vs end of year).
- Details. Background information about the accomplishment. Include things like the impact of your work, money saved, money gained, time saved, etc. Also include direct quotes from people if they gave you props or positive feedback.
- Person. The person you collaborated with or the person that gave you the feedback.
- Topic. The topic, project, task, situation, or company initiative the accomplishment was tied to.
- Link. Links to relevant Slack convos, tickets, decks, documents, etc.
I like to keep this as simple as possible with minimal friction.
If you need an example, you can get mine here.
How do you use it during performance evaluation time?
Your performance evaluation is a critical time for you to get credit for your work.
Many companies will have you conduct a self-review where you outline your accomplishments throughout the year. Your manager will use your self-review as a resource when they write your official performance evaluation. It will be used to determine your raise and possible promotion, so it's critical that you get credit for your wins.
That's where the Accomplishments Tracker comes into play.
You don't have to rack your brain to remember what you did over the year. You won't put too much thought into what you accomplished recently and not enough thought to your accomplishments that happened in the beginning of the year. You won't sell yourself short.
Your tracker is the key to getting credit where credit it due.