Tracking Accomplishments
This is something I wish someone had told me when I first stepped into the workforce. Keeping track of your accomplishments is something you need to be doing. Let’s talk about why you should keep track and what you need to be keeping track of.
First the “why.” There are plenty of reasons why you should be keeping track of your accomplishments. Let me list them:
Good for self esteem. When you’re in the day to day, you can forget about how far you’ve come. Just being able to look at the hard data of how well you’re doing or how much you’ve improved can be a great motivator. Give a little boost to your self esteem.
Good for resume/CV. You should be keeping track of projects you work on and metrics of your career development for your resume and CV. If you LOVE your job and see yourself working there until retirement, then this can just be for your company resume/CV. Or you know s*** happens. If you hate your job, your exit strategy awaits.
Good for P.E. You need to describe your work experience in your P.E. application in a way that shows that you’ve performed an appropriate amount of design work. Instead of having to remember all the work you’ve done four years in, you will already have this info handy.
Good for raises/promotions. The person in charge of the purse strings is not always the person who sees the hard work that you do day to day. Do yourself a favor and have the data on hand. I have the data to prove I deserve that raise or that promotion, do you?
Good for receipts. There have been times in my career where people have tried to diminish my accomplishments. And you know what? I had the f***ing receipts. It’s one thing to say, “I’m a hard worker.” It’s substantially more compelling to say, “I put out seven design-build proposals in the span of a month… and we won five of those projects. What the f*** have you done?”
And now, what sort of things should you be keeping track of?
Projects. Let’s start with the easiest and most straightforward one. Keep a running list of all the projects you worked on. Within that list, you should also be keeping track of individual tasks, deliverables, performance (e.g. on schedule, on budget), and lessons learned. I promise, it’s worth it to keep track of your projects. It’ll be a handy dandy little reference for you for years to come.
Kudos. When you get a “way to go” from clients, coworkers, supervisors, project managers, or whoever, keep a record. You may have noticed that your brain seems to have a knack for holding onto memories of guilt, shame, and regret. Human brains are wired this way to keep us from eating those toxic berries over and over again. We’re not as biologically inclined to remember the positive reinforcement. So, why not do ourselves a favor and keep track of these kudos?
Responsibilities. When did you start training people? When did you start managing your own projects? When did you start having one person reporting to you? How about ten people reporting to you? When did you get certified under that thing? Keeping track of these things can help you interpret the trajectory of your career. This can inform your decisions about what kind of things you should be taking on in order to advance your career in a way that works for you.
Productivity. Your comprehensive project list will grow the longer you’re working. But that list doesn’t necessarily show the rate at which you are working. How many projects are you juggling at a time? How many deliverables can you crank out in a certain amount of time? For those of you who are like me and clock in your eight hours then get the f*** out, sometimes our work ethic may be questioned by those with less developed time management skills. Having metrics of productivity on hand can help you school these time-wasters if they ever dare to question you.
Keep this information in a notebook, on the cloud, whatever you’re into. Just make sure you’re taking the time to keep track… you can thank me later.