Continuing on yesterdays blog article about career tips, today we have reached tip #2.
If you are anything like me, and I know I am, you have lists of things that need doing. Some things are more important than others. Some of those things on the list are quite fun, and the reason why you took the job in the first place. Some things on the list are really tedious and boring. That normally means you disregard the “priority” of things and go for the most fun ones instead until you run out of them, and then you hang around Facebook/YouTube just a little too much, until it is almost too late, especially as the budget (and thereby the available time) all of a sudden was slashed with 1/3 yesterday and you have nothing tangible to show of value when the boss calls for an emergency meeting. This is where todays tip comes in:
2. Complete one thing every day
This obviously plays wonderfully well with yesterdays tip, which was “1. Plan your day on your way in to work.” and only if you come up empty on what you could possibly complete today you should get worried.
Apart from turning this in to just another boring blog post that says “do the boring things first, before they get to be the most important things“, let me give you a hint on how you should re-create those task lists in the first place instead:
Firstly, if you have things in your task list that are too big you will never finish them off. “Ensure World Peace“, “Build Death Star and paint it pink” or “build Enterprise Intranet for the largest global bank in the world” type of tasks are too large. Get rid of them, and do so by breaking them up in smaller and nicer chunks.
Break it down
Preferably those chunks should be small enough so you can do several of those things in one day. This is where I should remind you that we are still only aiming to finish one of them each day as our benchmark. Even better is if those chunks are big enough to be able to announce them should someone, like your boss for example, ask you what you have done today, without your boss/colleague thinking “why are you telling me this?“.
This kinda rules out “send e-mail” and “make phone call” type tasks, unless they are really important and really big, but if they are I would probably suggest you look over your communications strategy instead, as those things probably should be communicated in face-to-face meetings if possible.
Much like I mentioned in the article yesterday, this tip is for you, personally, to make you feel that you are achieving things, that you move forward, and that you can look back at this day and remember it as “yet another successful day where I finished X, just as planned“. The project/colleagues/boss/employer will benefit from this too, but that is a lucky co-incidence, right now we are focusing on you and your career. One of the best ways to get to that stage is by re-defining what is an achievement in the first place.
Why are you doing this?
Your current career task at hand is to come across to your boss as a [amazon_link id="1590598385" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]clever and smart person who gets things done[/amazon_link], and who constantly delivers, as that is what every boss anywhere actually need from their work force. What you need to do is to instill your boss with the sense of constant progress in general, and regarding you in particular, as that will keep the boss carefree, but the only way to do that is by making sure you have that feeling too, and preferably because it (by then) will be true. Make sure you are the solution, not the problem.
The follow-up minor tip to this would be that you inform your colleagues and your boss about your achievements at regular carefully chosen intervals (please try to do this without coming across as a Quisling/@zz-licker/brag/Know-It-All, as that is never appreciated by bosses nor colleagues). However, do see it as marketing, as it is. The product is You, and you are appointed as the marketing manager for You.
The benefit with this type of “marketing”, if done correctly, is that your colleagues will see you as a high achiever and your boss will see you as an excellent problem solver. Even if you skip/fail the marketing part you will at least have a string of daily achievements in your back when you go in for that performance review with your boss (which, regardless of what they say, will be affecting the salary review). If you choose not to do the “marketing” bit, jot down what you have achieved somewhere where you can remind yourself and others about it later, just in case. 
Economy of scale
If nothing else you will set a good standard for your colleagues (which is awesome for…errr…Karma points…), and perhaps even influence a few of them to do the same. If you think about it: when was the last Friday where you could point at five clear achievements from that week? Now start multiplying that with the number of people on your team. Imagine what you, as a team, could achieve if you all did this!!
If you are working in a large organisation, and perhaps your team is, say, 20 people, and you all achieve (at least) one thing per person/day, that could be “talked about” or “mentioned” by the water cooler, that would be 100 discussions that could be overheard by colleagues from other departments. Either that could generate more business or it could help you in attracting staff from other departments who would like to work with “those productive energetic guys”, which by then would be your team.