from Hacker News

Show HN: Record Your Accomplishments

by samteeeee on 1/14/22, 3:39 AM with 80 comments

• by prepend on 1/14/22, 1:07 PM

  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.

• by cheesysam on 1/14/22, 9:45 AM

  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.

  PS. There's a typo in the html <title>.

• by lkxijlewlf on 1/14/22, 1:42 PM

  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.

• by quickthrower2 on 1/14/22, 6:11 AM

  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.

• by thereticent on 1/14/22, 5:34 AM

  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.

• by yddev on 1/14/22, 6:20 AM

  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?

• by JimWestergren on 1/14/22, 11:10 AM

  Props for the pricing model.

  I recommend enabling accomplishments.app/username listing the accomplishments publicly for those that enable that. Vanity is a powerful pull.

• by ggoo on 1/14/22, 5:36 AM

  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.

  https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/gratitude_journal

• by joe8756438 on 1/14/22, 5:30 PM

  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."

  Nice work!

  [0] https://www.tatatap.com

• by quantumOctopus on 1/14/22, 4:40 AM

  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!

• by badrabbit on 1/14/22, 6:22 PM

  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.

• by ram_rar on 1/14/22, 6:37 AM

  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.

• by nkko on 1/14/22, 8:20 PM

  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.

• by BossingAround on 1/14/22, 7:33 AM

  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.

• by sdrothrock on 1/14/22, 12:07 PM

  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.

• by avmich on 1/14/22, 4:46 AM

  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?

  /s

• by wiliaonson on 1/14/22, 2:48 PM

  I wonder what the special feature that will use this one instead of other journal or notepad apps is?

• by sidcool on 1/17/22, 9:24 AM

  Feature request. Enable saving with Cmd + Enter :) Also key board navigation.

• by arikr on 1/14/22, 5:44 AM

  OP, what template or site builder or CSS packages did you use for the design? Or was it a custom design by you?

• by kaetemi on 1/14/22, 8:11 AM

  I have a paper journal on my desk. Keeps me focused.

  Apps distract / disrupt flow too much for me.

• by smcameron on 1/14/22, 5:47 AM

  This is insane. You do not need an app for this.

  Just create a text file with vi(m). Type ":r !date" to get the date, then type in what you did at the top of the file. Then ":wq" to save and quit.

  That's it. I've done this for decades and it's perfect. An app? Are you insane? As if an app is going to last for more than 5 minutes.