The blog

Some days are just so busy. You work and work, and sud­den­ly the work­day is over. Sud­den­ly it is Fri­day again. And before you know it, it is time for a holiday.

The intense work­days turn into a blur over longer peri­ods of time. What did you real­ly accom­plish and do? Appar­ent­ly a lot, but when try­ing to rec­ol­lect what, you turn out blank. Yet you are exhausted.

At times like these it is easy to feel down­heart­ed and dis­cour­aged. We have been work­ing so hard, but can­not clear­ly and eas­i­ly see the progress we have made. It feels as if the work nev­er ends. Mon­day, Fri­day, Mon­day, Friday…

Make your accom­plish­ments visible
In times like these we would feel bet­ter if we could clear­ly see how far we have actu­al­ly got­ten and what we have accom­plished with­out hav­ing to remem­ber all the things we have done. Look­ing in the rearview-mir­ror and acknowl­edg­ing every­thing we have done is like check­ing the task off our list all over. Per­haps the excite­ment of com­ple­tion will not be there this time, but it will still feel great to be remind­ed of what you have done and see the progress you have made.

Visu­al varieties
This is exact­ly why you should fig­ure out the best way for you to visu­al­ize you recent accom­plish­ments. Depend­ing on the for­mat you keep your to-do-tasks in, you could for instance:

• Click on ​”Dis­play com­plet­ed tasks” in your dig­i­tal to-do-list (for instance in Outlook’s tasks-function).


• Keep a small skew­er on your desk where you impale Pos­tIts (on which you have writ­ten one task each) with com­plet­ed tasks one by one as you com­plete them.


• My mentee Fri­da placed a bowl on her desk in which she put all the com­plet­ed and crum­pled Pos­tIt notes with tasks. She thor­ough­ly enjoyed see­ing the bowl fill up every week.


• Draw a line rep­re­sent­ing how far you feel you have got­ten dur­ing the day on a sheet of paper or on a white­board. Every day you add onto the line, and even­tu­al­ly you see how the line gets longer and longer.


• Cross tasks off your to-do-notepad with a pen that has a new col­or for every week, and there­by make it easy to see what you have accom­plished this par­tic­u­lar week. Per­haps alter­nat­ing between four dif­fer­ent col­ors is enough.


• Or, do some­thing else that suits you better.

What mat­ters is that you quick­ly and eas­i­ly can see (or phys­i­cal­ly feel) how much you have accom­plished even if you at first thought did not remem­ber just how much.

If you want to, do this

1. Take out your to-do-list right now and take a look back at the past few months.


2. Make note of all the things you have com­plet­ed and enjoy that you do not have to do these things again.


3. If look­ing in your to-do-rearview mir­ror felt good and you think you might need to do it again from time to time, then add this to your Fri­day-rou­tine so that you take a few min­utes to skim through the week that passed and every­thing you have fin­ished on your to-do-list every week.

Or, do a review of your accom­plish­ments when­ev­er you feel down and out, dis­cour­aged and downhearted.

Small tri­umphs become great ones in the long-run
If you make the effort to make it clear to your­self what you have accom­plished and done while work­ing so hard, you will real­ize that you have done more than you ini­tial­ly felt you had. You will for instance be remind­ed of phone calls you had for­got­ten you have made, and can again be glad you have them behind you. The moments of recall­ing every­thing we have done so far turn into the small vic­to­ri­ous moments which are so impor­tant to us being com­fort­able, hap­py and at ease in our inner work­ing-envi­ron­ment. You give your­self a sym­bol­ic pat on the back and can give your­self a silent (or loud) ​”Well done!”.

What is your method?
How do you make it clear to your­self that you have accom­plished more in the last few days than you recall at first glance? Com­ment and tell us.