Never Scramble Again: Career Project Tracking
Ever get to self-evaluation season at the end of the work year and you go “OMFG…What did I do this year?!” Or perhaps you’re about to walk into your boss’ office to ask for that raise or promotion and you need to have the facts of all your hard work ready to go? Maybe you’re preparing for an interview and need some good examples to answer questions. Don’t go scrambling through past emails, project plans, and scattered papers trying to piece together your accomplishments…
Enter your historical Career Project Tracker! You should already be tracking your career achievements somewhere: a word doc, a notebook, sticky note, tattooed on your left arm…you get the idea. If you aren’t, let’s talk about how preparation equals tons time saving (and less panic) later.
Nope. Not me having to do my self evaluation.
You need to track the following 3 basic things always:
Project Details: an overview of the project, what you did, and targets.
Stakeholders: people you worked with so you can show impact or ask for feedback/references later.
Key Takeaways or Learnings: outcomes and what you or the business learned.
Project Details
Include an overview of the project here, why it’s important to the business/its potential impact, and finally goals and why/how you got to those precise goals. It’s good to also always mention who (person or team) you’re working with as well as actions taken.
Actions Taken: you can make this a sub-section if you’re often doing STAR interviews, or you can include it the project details.
Stakeholders
All the people. All of ‘em. Okay, at least the Top 3 and their job titles. Its also helpful to add their LinkedIn if they have it to reference years later.
Fun Fact: I launched 3 projects back-to-back-to-back that had over 50 Key Stakeholders and yes, I knew each one by name and you bet I listed them in my performance review and asked for feedback.
Key Takeaways / Learnings
This section is to speak of the results, both good and bad. What you learned professionally and what the company learned. Include performance numbers whenever possible. A good way to include 3 Takeaways / Learnings:
If goals were met or not and why
An Anecdotal Story
Additional wins or learnings
I’m not going to lie: I just checked my personal tracker and I stopped after March (it’s October, y’all).
For me, I need:
A way to track ALL the things that works for me
To remind myself to do it
I’ve had companies with internal project tracking systems. In others, I’ve used to use a word doc. At my most recent gig, I was using a OneNote and it totally didn’t work for me. However, I do use Notion all the time, so I created a template for myself (it’s also in my store above if you want to get in on it).
They key is:
track projects in a way you will actually use it.
If you have the intrinsic motivation to consistently remember to do this, awesome.
If not, like many neurodivergent folks, you may need some help to remind yourself to do it. Here are some ideas:
Body double with a friend or mentor
Put a weekly, monthly, quarterly meeting with yourself on your calendar to “Update Career Projects”
Time block your calendar for 15 or 30 minutes daily, weekly, or monthly to do it
If you’re running a post mortem, include 5-10 minutes at the end to allow yourself and the team to update their trackers (share the love!)
If you receive a post mortem or had to contribute to one, set a note to copy and paste into your tracker.
Put a sticky note reminder somewhere weird, like a cabinet you only open once and while
Auto setup an email or text to remind you at intervals
If you’re having a hard time with just “Update Your Project Tracker” break it down into sub-steps:
Monday: Update Project Description.
Wednesday: Add Stakeholders.
Every Friday: update status button or add performance metric.
This tool should grow and expand with you year after year…if you do it. The fear of having to do this in a panic once a year is personally really motivating to track my projects. And little tip: you can also stick this into an AI with a good prompt and boom! Self-eval draft written!
But please do edit it…AI isn’t perfect and is merely a tool.
