If I asked you to list your accomplishments, what would you say? Would you say you think you’ve accomplished enough?
Or when I ask the question would you do as the majority of people do? Will you tell me what you’ve accomplished by telling me what you’ haven’t done yet?
Boost your productivity by celebrating your accomplishments
Every Friday in The Workshop—the online writing community I created—we talk about our wins and find ways to celebrate them. We do this by listing our accomplishments for the week. Accomplishments can be work-related, personal, spiritual, or whatever else helped you move closer to your ideal way of living. And each person interprets what accomplishment means themselves.
I include this exercise every week because it’s a simple but powerful way to boost your chances of reaching your goals and accomplishments. Research from the American Society of Training and Development shows that when you hold yourself accountable to your goals in this way, you have 95% odds of making them happen.
When we talk about our wins, too often we talk from a framework of what hasn’t been done yet.
I finished the story, now I’ll send it to beta readers.
I didn’t get as much of my editing done as I’d planned
I sent out half of the pitches on my list.
These statements reflect the process of taking action. 1. What’s been done? 2. What needs to be done next. But it’s easy for the two halves to fall out of balance, and more often than not, people pay far more attention to the parts that haven’t been done and don’t yet exist. When you focus too much on the negative space, you lose sight of your vision.
What you’ve accomplished puts your goals into focus
A few years ago, I went through Seth Godin’s altMBA program. It was an intense month of classes, reading, writing, and planning. All of that on top of regular life and work. I also had the opportunity to meet and work with some really amazing and accomplished people.
I learned an incredible amount, but it also made me see just how much I didn’t know and how much I couldn’t do.
One particularly exhausting day, the sheer volume of what I didn’t know weighed heavily on me, and I considered quitting the program. I didn’t want to quit, though. What I really wanted was to believe myself and my experience to be worthy of the people in my cohort. I wanted to know I belonged.
That’s when something shifted.
I started looking at who I am and what I can do instead of the areas I didn’t know. The image of a mosaic appeared in my head. Some areas full and colorful. Others are empty. Other pieces were partially there, not nothing but not quite complete, These are your works in progress.
When you’re too close to your work, the big picture gets lost. You’ll see a jagged bit of color or tile that seems out of place. Pull back if you want your master plan to come into view.
That’s how knowledge works. We can’t know everything, and how lucky we are to live in a world so expansive and overwhelming that we will always have more to see, do, and explore.
But too often we look at the mosaic of our choices and our lives to only see the unfinished spaces and broken bits. That’s what happens when you’re too close to your work, and it saps your creativity and effectiveness. For every one negative, your human brain needs five positives to come back to an equilibrium. And how do you expect to do your best work when you’re out of balance?
I challenge you to take a step back and take a look at yourself as a whole. Share what you see in the colorful areas without any caveats.
What are you doing that works? What has moved you forward? How does each detail fit into your big picture?
