I noticed one benefit is to help “beat imposter syndrome.”
This is certainly very real, I feel it quite a bit, I recognize references to this more frequently. And they all tend to assume that imposter syndrome means that people are truly capable.
This is an interesting assumption as true imposters also feel like imposters. I don’t mean con people, they are quite brazen. I mean incompetent people also feel like imposters.
I suppose it’s nice to help false imposters overcome their anxieties. But I’d like to see data on false vs true. Assuming that true imposters are false can lead to just lots of noise about BS accomplishments.
I had an employee who would laundry list accomplishments during their annual reviews and it was hard to distinguish true accomplishments vs things like going to a meeting (listed many times) or preparing meeting minutes (listed many times). That employee was challenging and more so because they ascribed to a philosophy of “celebrating all accomplishments.” It was like having unbirthday parties with people not as much fun as the Mad Hatter.
It's funny how the cargo cult hides groupthink. Particularly the psychology of impostor syndrome. It's not just insecurity, it's got an underlying cause. The person affected realizes a truth: that there's a body of knowledge they lack, or they aren't accomplishing much but are still getting approval from their boss. Thats not some kind of "false impostor feeling", that's literally becoming aware of a truth about oneself, followed by fear of consequence.
When peers say "that's just impostor syndrome, don't worry about it!" they're reinforcing a groupthink that we should ignore the truth. The truth is that we often do excel despite our own shortcomings - but those shortcomings are real. We shouldn't hand-wave them away just to feel better, we should be focusing on improving ourselves.
> I mean incompetent people also feel like imposters.
Well, not all. Does the share of people that feel like imposters increase or decrease with expertise? I have anecdotal evidence pointing both ways, and no good real study to get data from.
Anyway, imposter syndrome hurting competent people is way too common to ignore. You are just combating the reciprocate hypothesis, what is ok as long as it doesn't also harm the original one.
I wonder if maintaining a list of things would only increase impostor syndrome - it's not about recording your accomplishments, I think, it's about how you feel about them. Is it something that took maximum effort, or do you feel like you were just at the right place at the right time?
There will be lots of users who don't have the same workflow as a developer opening vim all day. People who spend their lives in meetings probably need the reminders. I like the idea and it's a super simple execution.
I like this idea and I've been doing it most of my career (I keep a work journal).
But... It is only half the equation.
If your manager isn't doing same, they suck at their job and you should leave.
Your manager should keep a file on every single one of their reports that details that report's accomplishments, fails, training, wants, likes, dislikes, etc. They get this info from talking to everyone - constantly.
When review time comes, there should be no surprises. If you walk into the room for you review (or call or whatever), and you don't have a strong idea what your rating is, your manager sucks and you should leave [0]. There should never be surprises during reviews. You should never have to remind them of your accomplishments - though you should be prepared to.
A manager's job is to manage. If they're not doing the above, they suck and they're not doing their job and you should leave.
[0] Or you suck and can't pick up on what their trying to tell you, but that's another rant.
Nice app idea. I set up a slack reminder to do the same, so there is a need and a problem to be solved.
I wouldn’t pay for this but something to think about is an organisation might because they should want to know what their staff have achieved. Otherwise all they have to go on is completed tasks - which we all know isn’t everything. There is value in gap fillers.
A org focused product would be great especially if it was rounded with 1-1 and performance review stuff. products like that already sell which is a good sign.
On one hand it reminds me of todone, but I like that it's weekly and focused on work and performance evaluations.
I signed up for Pro. I think you may want to make a "pay what you want" option with $10 as the threshold for Pro features. I would have paid more, especially as it's a one-time payment.
One note for you: the title of the pages on mobile are "Accoumplishment App" rather than "Accomplishments App." Probably an html title tag to edit.
I've been doing this in a single long running document - think a single 200 page word document with <hr>'s everywhere - for many of the reasons you articulate in your landing page for the past 3-6 months.
Things like "designed and created an algorithm to index the internet using c++" or "developed an online platform for selling books using php".
My reminder is stepping into the transport tube home. I spend maybe 3 hours in 5-15 min blocks a month.
I feel as though I'm your target customer in that it would give me better visibility of what I have recorded and more ready access to analysis of it.
(here comes the but...)
Please don't take this as a slight on your product or your work but somehow it feels too expensive for the quality difference between my current process and what you are offering. I couldn't give you feedback as to specifically why or what features would convert me to a paying customer just that I wouldn't purchase it or evidently sign up for the free account.
At least one other person has signed up per comments here and yet I am comfortable with my enormously long horizontal rule separated... work blog diary?
On a side note, I think a market exists for it and I applaud the effort in creating it - can you comment on your tech stack?
The pricing page lists the paid version as a one time payment of $10 and not a subscription. Price seems fine to me if you end up getting any value out of it.
No problem, thank you for the feedback and insight. The tech stack is very boring - I made this thing to solve a problem for myself, not to play with new tech :)
A less work-centric and more personal-life-centric version of this is a gratitude journal. I started doing mine some years back and, much to my surprise, it does actually work.
This is super cool. I built a product that accomplishes a similar function: record notes via sms or email input, play them back via email[0].
I originally thought this would be useful for every todo. Once done, it would be put on the list of "done" accomplishments. But, accomplishments of too fine a granularity are not really motivating anymore. I'm interested in trying to zoom out and see what it's like to receive a summary of "accomplishments" instead of "tasks."
I like the spirit of this app but I invite every manager to encourage their team to do this already. Every time I have a 1:1 I push my team to stop and think about what they accomplished in their last week of work. I have a simple template in a shared doc where I have them celebrate their accomplishment every single week. I cheer for them and surprisingly many people are not used to take a step back and think about what they were great at. Hopefully this app will help more!
Beware, though. Praise and celebrate genuine accomplishments, otherwise after a few occurrences, the people would just be turned off by it. Overdoing it can do more harm than good.
It's performance review season and I struggle with this. I don't organize what I do in terms of accomplishments, it's all always small steps part of a larger vision so I have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what counts as an accomplishment.
If I fix something big or get something done, I just move to the next thing, perhaps an app like this can help me document that if I am not too lazy to use it.
I've been keeping a daily work journal since 2013 [0]. Just some daily notes in Markdown files about what I worked on, who I talked to, problems solved, stuff to remember, what I should pick up with tomorrow. (Currently just using VS Code with the Foam extension, configured to create a YYYY-MM-DD file as a command.)
It's great for helping me look up "what was that fix I did a couple years ago?", but it's also invaluable come perf review season. I go through literally every day's notes for the last year, summarize each day into a bullet, then re-summarize into higher-level tasks and accomplishments.
In the spirit of this concept, I think the most value you would get is by associating this with jira/slack and other workplace tools where employees can use these as way to justify raise/promotion/impact. Just as a standalone app, it doesn't add anymore value than recording this in notion/gdoc or any note taking tool.
This is great. You should consider team version where everyone shares their accomplishements and you could have a joint team accomplishements table (manager or individuals could tag some of them appropriately). I would implement this with my team immidiately.
I don't know, I like it. I think it'll be incredibly tough to sell because you're competing with text editors, which esp. engineers use on a daily basis... When I think about it, things like:
- Organizing text (e.g. source files)
- Ordering text (e.g. based on dates)
- Syncing text to a backup (e.g. gdrive)
- Setting up a reminder (e.g. crontab)
All of the above are kind of core competencies of a lot of engineers. So I think it has to do more, such as drag-and-drop images like Evernote, integrate with Jira/Slack, integrate with Anki (for whatever reason), I don't know...
I like the idea, but personally, I wouldn't buy it because I can do all of the above myself with literally minimal effort. I hope you can make it a more compelling offer. Looks great to me though, I wish you all the success!
Note that maybe the solution is to target different users than engineers. Students wouldn't care about Jira/Slack integration, for example. Then again, students wouldn't pay for this, they get their stuff for free from Microsoft.
I agree. I built it to solve a problem for myself. Having it be a standalone app actually helps me to remember to record my accomplishments, rather than a GDoc which I easily forget about.
I see a lot of engineers here saying this is redundant and wonder if you might not be targeting the right audience. Parents with kids, students, people trying to form better habits, people with depression all seem like they could use this kind of tool.
Don't record your accomplishments. Be humble. Make good deeds as the way of life, don't record your highs - if they are memorable, you'll remember, and will be able to tell later, and if they are not, they aren't worth it. Take example from high achievers - did Einstein, or Feynman, or Dostoevsky recorded carefully their accomplishments? Should those who are more modest achievers - perhaps - record them?
[+] [-] prepend|4 years ago|reply
This is certainly very real, I feel it quite a bit, I recognize references to this more frequently. And they all tend to assume that imposter syndrome means that people are truly capable.
This is an interesting assumption as true imposters also feel like imposters. I don’t mean con people, they are quite brazen. I mean incompetent people also feel like imposters.
I suppose it’s nice to help false imposters overcome their anxieties. But I’d like to see data on false vs true. Assuming that true imposters are false can lead to just lots of noise about BS accomplishments.
I had an employee who would laundry list accomplishments during their annual reviews and it was hard to distinguish true accomplishments vs things like going to a meeting (listed many times) or preparing meeting minutes (listed many times). That employee was challenging and more so because they ascribed to a philosophy of “celebrating all accomplishments.” It was like having unbirthday parties with people not as much fun as the Mad Hatter.
[+] [-] throwaway984393|4 years ago|reply
When peers say "that's just impostor syndrome, don't worry about it!" they're reinforcing a groupthink that we should ignore the truth. The truth is that we often do excel despite our own shortcomings - but those shortcomings are real. We shouldn't hand-wave them away just to feel better, we should be focusing on improving ourselves.
[+] [-] thedufer|4 years ago|reply
Isn't that just what impostor syndrome means? It's not a syndrome to correctly identify yourself as an impostor. That's just "being an impostor".
[+] [-] marcosdumay|4 years ago|reply
Well, not all. Does the share of people that feel like imposters increase or decrease with expertise? I have anecdotal evidence pointing both ways, and no good real study to get data from.
Anyway, imposter syndrome hurting competent people is way too common to ignore. You are just combating the reciprocate hypothesis, what is ok as long as it doesn't also harm the original one.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DarylZero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheesysam|4 years ago|reply
PS. There's a typo in the html <title>.
[+] [-] lkxijlewlf|4 years ago|reply
But... It is only half the equation.
If your manager isn't doing same, they suck at their job and you should leave.
Your manager should keep a file on every single one of their reports that details that report's accomplishments, fails, training, wants, likes, dislikes, etc. They get this info from talking to everyone - constantly.
When review time comes, there should be no surprises. If you walk into the room for you review (or call or whatever), and you don't have a strong idea what your rating is, your manager sucks and you should leave [0]. There should never be surprises during reviews. You should never have to remind them of your accomplishments - though you should be prepared to.
A manager's job is to manage. If they're not doing the above, they suck and they're not doing their job and you should leave.
[0] Or you suck and can't pick up on what their trying to tell you, but that's another rant.
[+] [-] slantyyz|4 years ago|reply
Even the managers who I considered to be good at their jobs didn't record this stuff.
[+] [-] typeofhuman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|4 years ago|reply
I wouldn’t pay for this but something to think about is an organisation might because they should want to know what their staff have achieved. Otherwise all they have to go on is completed tasks - which we all know isn’t everything. There is value in gap fillers.
A org focused product would be great especially if it was rounded with 1-1 and performance review stuff. products like that already sell which is a good sign.
[+] [-] slantyyz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thereticent|4 years ago|reply
I signed up for Pro. I think you may want to make a "pay what you want" option with $10 as the threshold for Pro features. I would have paid more, especially as it's a one-time payment.
One note for you: the title of the pages on mobile are "Accoumplishment App" rather than "Accomplishments App." Probably an html title tag to edit.
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yddev|4 years ago|reply
Things like "designed and created an algorithm to index the internet using c++" or "developed an online platform for selling books using php".
My reminder is stepping into the transport tube home. I spend maybe 3 hours in 5-15 min blocks a month.
I feel as though I'm your target customer in that it would give me better visibility of what I have recorded and more ready access to analysis of it.
(here comes the but...)
Please don't take this as a slight on your product or your work but somehow it feels too expensive for the quality difference between my current process and what you are offering. I couldn't give you feedback as to specifically why or what features would convert me to a paying customer just that I wouldn't purchase it or evidently sign up for the free account.
At least one other person has signed up per comments here and yet I am comfortable with my enormously long horizontal rule separated... work blog diary?
On a side note, I think a market exists for it and I applaud the effort in creating it - can you comment on your tech stack?
[+] [-] halfdan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimWestergren|4 years ago|reply
I recommend enabling accomplishments.app/username listing the accomplishments publicly for those that enable that. Vanity is a powerful pull.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggoo|4 years ago|reply
https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/gratitude_journal
[+] [-] joe8756438|4 years ago|reply
I originally thought this would be useful for every todo. Once done, it would be put on the list of "done" accomplishments. But, accomplishments of too fine a granularity are not really motivating anymore. I'm interested in trying to zoom out and see what it's like to receive a summary of "accomplishments" instead of "tasks."
Nice work!
[0] https://www.tatatap.com
[+] [-] quantumOctopus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gurjeet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badrabbit|4 years ago|reply
If I fix something big or get something done, I just move to the next thing, perhaps an app like this can help me document that if I am not too lazy to use it.
[+] [-] acemarke|4 years ago|reply
It's great for helping me look up "what was that fix I did a couple years ago?", but it's also invaluable come perf review season. I go through literally every day's notes for the last year, summarize each day into a bullet, then re-summarize into higher-level tasks and accomplishments.
[0] https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2020/09/coding-career-advi...
[+] [-] ram_rar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BossingAround|4 years ago|reply
- Organizing text (e.g. source files)
- Ordering text (e.g. based on dates)
- Syncing text to a backup (e.g. gdrive)
- Setting up a reminder (e.g. crontab)
All of the above are kind of core competencies of a lot of engineers. So I think it has to do more, such as drag-and-drop images like Evernote, integrate with Jira/Slack, integrate with Anki (for whatever reason), I don't know...
I like the idea, but personally, I wouldn't buy it because I can do all of the above myself with literally minimal effort. I hope you can make it a more compelling offer. Looks great to me though, I wish you all the success!
Note that maybe the solution is to target different users than engineers. Students wouldn't care about Jira/Slack integration, for example. Then again, students wouldn't pay for this, they get their stuff for free from Microsoft.
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdrothrock|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avmich|4 years ago|reply
/s
[+] [-] csdvrx|4 years ago|reply
This!
Also, do it like backups the Linus way: let other record them for you :)
[+] [-] wiliaonson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidcool|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arikr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaetemi|4 years ago|reply
Apps distract / disrupt flow too much for me.