Organizational tips for supporting your professional growth and effectively advocating for yourself

Background

Every company has a self-review process where you’re required to document your accomplishments (usually annually or quarterly). I always struggled to remember everything I’ve worked on, hunt down old docs, or quantify how my work made an impact. But this annoying task is critical – it affects promotions, new project opportunities, and helps build your portfolio when applying for new roles in the future.

These are the methods I’ve adopted to make this process less painful.

1. Trello to-do list

I use Trello for my personal work to-do list, with columns for:

• Notes: things I reference often or I don’t want to lose track of
• Backlog: all the things I should do eventually
• This week: my goals for the current week
• In progress: what I’m currently working on
• Blocked: tasks I started but stopped for some reason (e.g., sent email & waiting on reply, or just taking a break)
• Done: completed work in columns organized by month. I also started reflecting on accomplishments & challenges at the end of each month and writing a summary card at the top of the column.

2. Yay folder

I have a “yay” folder to collect screenshots of emails and slack messages when people say something positive about my work. I’ve found it helpful to have concrete examples to reference during review time, or to reflect on for validation when I’m having a rough day.

3. Hype doc

I write a Hype Doc to keep a running history of my project work and other contributions. It includes:

For each project:

• Project goals
• Contributions I made