Remember the Milk Makes Work Reviews a Breeze!

One of the things I dread most about fully-employed work, is the annual work review that most of us will have to do on a once to twice yearly basis. It's not that I have nothing to show for the work I should have done but that I end up sitting at my desk, tearing my hair out, not knowing where to start. As a full-time educator, my day is full of so much work, I barely have time to peep on Facebook. But when it comes to work reviews, I suddenly have nothing to say about it. And, it's ironic really, since it's the one time you can toot your own horn in a perfectly respectable fashion and take the full opportunity to prove to your boss that you really deserve a promotion or a raise.

Remember The Milk is a great tool for getting that annual work review done in a cinch as well as help you get the work you need done. It's a simple two-step process: 1) use RTM as a GTD aggregator for all the work you need to get done, then 2) track all the work you've completed to report your achievements to earn that performance bonus. If you show your boss all the work you got done and more, your boss is more likely to realize that you can do even greater things. That makes him look good, and that's the incentive for him to give you the promotion you want.

Aggregate all the work that needs to be done
In broad brushstrokes, this is using RTM as a productivity tool. There are many ways you can use RTM, but I'll just stick to the GTD basics here. Every time there's work to be done for any project that you are responsible for, capture it all in the RTM bucket. Need to call a client this afternoon to follow-up on a meeting? Put in "Call Big Client to confirm Project X budget" and tag it as simply as "work" or as detailed as "project x, budget, Big Client". Then, if you haven't already, create a smart-list that lists down all the work with the tag "Big Client". This will help you track everything you need to do for Big Client.

Track the good work you've done
The secret to the hack is all in the tags and the smart lists. When its time for your work review, look up you "Big Client" smart-list. Make sure you have no tasks selected so that the list details box appears on the right. Then, click on the completed link. It lists down all the work you've done for the Big Client and RTM says "Completed tasks are kept forever; we never automatically delete tasks data" so you can keep them for a long, long time. Churn out the list into your work review and hand it over to the boss with a wide smile cause you'll be proud to say you did all that work.

He'll be so impressed with your good record-keeping of all the tasks he's asked you to do and that you managed to complete everything he wanted that he'll be hard pressed to deny you the good reward you so clearly deserve!