Hi Reader,
One of the most frustrating parts of corporate work is how quickly good work disappears. I really used to struggle with keeping track of the work that I was doing, and more importantly, I don't think I was able to tell my manager about the all the work that I was keeping running.
You solve a messy problem on Tuesday. You unblock three people on Wednesday. You make a decision that prevents two weeks of rework on Thursday.
By the time you get to your semi-annual review, you remember that you attended a lot of meetings. You go through emails and your calendar just trying to remember what happened this semester (based on actual experience 😜).
I used to rely far too much on my memory to reconstruct my impact. It only worked when I was a college hire and my manager was assigning all my work and very aware of what I was doing.
Now, as a Senior PM, I keep a simple running impact record. This is not a detailed work journal and I don’t document everything I do. I capture the handful of things that changed because I was involved. I was doing it by hand for a while, and now I have an agent that does it for me automatically.
The Four Things I Record
At the end of the week, I spend about five minutes answering four topics:
- What moved? What decision, project, relationship, risk, or deliverable progressed?
- What did I contribute? What did I clarify, create, influence, coordinate, or decide?
- Why did it matter? What delay, confusion, risk, or unnecessary work did this prevent? What outcome did it support?
- What evidence exists?
A metric is useful, but evidence can also be a decision made, a blocker removed, positive feedback, a completed milestone, or a team changing direction because of your recommendation. The important shift is moving from a list of tasks to a record of change.
For example:
Task: Coordinated meetings across several teams.
Impact: Brought the right teams to a decision on an unresolved dependency, which kept the next milestone from slipping.
The second version does not exaggerate the work. It explains why the work mattered.
Where AI Helps
The nice thing about using AI is that you don't have to start from scratch. I use Copilot to read through all my notes, emails, meeting transcripts and pull out signals that it thinks signify something. I will then review what it provided, add it what I think it missed, and make my own edits as need.
If your calendar, task list, and meeting notes are a mess at the end of the week, try this:
Review the work notes below and identify the three to five most meaningful outcomes from this week.
For each one, separate:
--What I did
--What changed because of it
--Who benefited
--Any evidence of progress or impact
Do not inflate my contribution or invent metrics. If the impact is unclear, ask me a specific follow-up question. Then turn the strongest items into concise bullets I could use in a weekly update or accomplishment log.
Work notes: [Paste your notes, tasks, or meeting summaries here.]
Use the result as a draft, not the final answer. You still need to decide what mattered and whether the wording is accurate.
I take this document and keep it running so that once my review comes up, I have very clear data points to work with. On particular eventful weeks, I shoot my manager an email with my wins from the previous week.
Your Weekly Work Challenge
Open one document and title it “Impact Log.” Add this week’s date and capture one thing that changed because of your work that day.
A few months from now, when you are preparing for a performance review, updating your résumé, asking for a promotion, or trying to remember what you actually did all year, you will be very glad it exists.
If you try it, shoot me an reply and let me know how it went!
Some other thoughts from the week:
A few things I’ve shared recently for the ambitious women trying to build a career, stay organized, and still have a life outside of work:
And if you want the day-to-day version of all of this, you can follow along on Instagram.
With warmth,
P.S. What part of your work is hardest to make visible? Hit reply and tell me. I may build a future issue around it.
