List your accomplishments | Hacker News Reader

List your accomplishments

blog.timrpeterson.com

I was right with the author on this until they referenced Donald Trump as some sort of role model. Ugh. The final paragraph of TFA is quite relevant advice for Trump: Don't Brag. And advice for everyone else: Don't Be Like Trump.

That said, I think self-reflection is fantastic. Maybe you feel like you're always running in place? Write down what you've been doing for the past few weeks/months/years, figure out what you think has been valuable or not as valuable, and adjust going forward.

This practice has been super-helpful for me also as a morale boost going into negotiations about compensation. It gives me both moral courage that I have been valuable as well as specific details that I can bring up to demonstrate how I've provided value to the company.

In all of this, though, beware that we tend to undervalue the contributions of others just as much as others undervalue our own contributions. Even for the smartest/most productive of us, our own accomplishments still stand on the shoulders of others'.

yeah..#1 on list: inherit dad's real estate empire

Author here. Using Donald trump wasn't as a role model but because you know who he is and that he makes lists.

Your target audience is still going to read his name, have an intuitive negative feeling, and associate that negative feeling with your article.

In other words, the audience is completely emotional and is unable to see the good traits of someone because they don't like their politics.

HN everyone

> completely emotional

Nope, just emotional to varying degrees. If you think that people don't ever have emotional responses to things or are always able to separate those emotional responses from their interpretations of things, I am really curious what life experiences led you to that conclusion. It differs drastically from my interactions with people.

I actually suspect we're misinterpreting each other.

Welcome to the world of disclaimers, trigger warnings, and safe spaces.

What do any of those things have to do with the advice that someone's essay would be more rhetorically effective if they chose a different person?

It's not due to politics. It wouldn't matter of her want running for anything. It's a matter of him having so many negative traits. Generally, you choose someone with mostly positive traits for emulation.

That kind of self-reflection is something I'm struggling with right now.

I'll start doing things, forget I accomplished them, realize I'm halfway into the month and then panic profusely when I don't remember what exactly I've done.

For example, starting this January I have been working on my front-end and design skills, since I feel weak in that area. I looked for relevant books, got through several ("Design of everyday things", "About Face", "HTML&CSS" by Jon Duckett, and finishing up "CSS Secrets" by Lea Verou), created some very neat things in pure CSS, and I'm getting better at it by the day.

Objectively speaking, I've gotten through a lot of things in the last 3 weeks, but it doesn't feel that way. My intuition tells me, quite unhealthily, that I got nothing done. I think the list of accomplishments I'm keeping is the only thing that keeps me sane against the overzealous (and scatterbrained) project manager that lives in my head.

I worries me a bit.

Make a list of things of the things on your backburner, so you can walk away from them guilt-free. The walking through a doorway effect ;)

I need to do this for job hunting purposes. What's my greatest accomplishment, they will ask. I'm not sure how to answer that. I don't have much stand out stuff, at least not career wise. Should I mention a cool coding project I worked on for a job? That seems somewhat underwhelming as a "greatest" accomplishment.

Any advice on this front?

They don't want you to find the global maximum of impressiveness. They want you to tell a story of how you solved a problem so that they can tell themselves a story of how you'll solve a problem in their business and thereby cut costs or (preferably) increase revenue.

Yes, mention the cool coding project! We're mostly average[1], most companies/jobs are average, and most employers should and do value our average accomplishments[2]! If you enthusiastically and knowledgeably describe a cool coding project you'll be winning vs most people I've interviewed.

If you're going for CTO of SpaceX, yes, you'll need some overwhelming accomplishments. If you're going for developer role 437 at SpaceX, less so :)

[1] when compared to peers, e.g the people going for the same jobs as you

[2] and will definitely prefer a nice 'average' person, to an obnoxious 'genius'

As sibling commenters already noted, the accomplishment you tell of doesn't need to be groundbreaking.

I'll take it further: It doesn't even need to be your _biggest_ accomplishment! For example, you can choose to talk about _the first_ time you did something, say, lead a small project from start to finish with some result X. Then you explain why you're so proud of that accomplishment: Because previously you only worked on projects led by others, or only took over existing projects, etc, but this was the first time you managed a project from planning all the way through release and support. That means it was the first time you faced challenges such as X, Y, and Z, and you overcame them by doing this and that...

And although you've led many other bigger and more interesting projects since then, this one small project made you a better leader and better engineer, and that's why you consider it one of your greatest personal accomplishments.

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Notice how in an answer like this you get to throw in all sorts of things that hiring managers love: Challenges you've faced, how you overcame them, how you approach problems, leadership experience, how you think, etc.

And by the way, the great thing about "greatest" is that it's relative, so there's no wrong answer. Some times it's better to tell of a smaller accomplishment if there's a better story that goes along with it.

This is also a good habit for folks who occasionally have a problem with their brain telling them that they are worthless and can't do anything useful.

> Einstein had numerous colleagues essential to his success, but historians only list the accomplishments as they were Einstein’s alone. You don’t know any of Einstein’s colleagues names so writing down your place in the world matters.

What historical account of Einstein have you been reading?

I came across this concept called "The jar of awesome" which on first glance seems really naive but I really took a liking to it. It's basically just writing down your victories when they happen and storing them somewhere in a tangible way. A collection of notes, post its, anything, but it has to be physical and it has to be stored. That way it feels "real", and its a great reminder of the small victories we tend to forget

I tried a similar thing at work several years ago, before "scrum" took hold everywhere. I kept my to-do list as a stack of post-it notes, and when they were done, I'd ball them up and throw them into a decorative glass mug someone left in my office.

"Update ownership on parser tests." "Get M3 feature list from Dan." "Finish code coverage slide deck." "Call dentist." "Buy quicklime and duct tape." "Investigate ia64 hang." "Finish mid-year discussions."

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