The Treat Yo’ Self Achievement List

Having a running list of your achievements will help you build a great resume and progress your career.

Treat Yo’ Self! If you’re a Parks and Recreation fan, then you’re familiar with this phrase.

Of course, in Parks and Recreation, it’s referring to buying yourself luxury goods, but I want to flip this over to your professional life. And you should do this whether you’re currently working for an employer or you’re a stay-at-home mom! Either way, this is a great tool to add to your career strategy.

Managers aren’t always the best at regularly recognizing employees’ achievements and stellar performance, if at all. Neither are partners, co-parents, or kids. But that doesn’t mean you’re not adding value to your position or your family, to your current employer, or that you’re not hitting some amazing goals!

Don’t wait around for your manager or someone else to give you your due credit. Take control of your performance management and your career strategy by creating a Treat Yo’ Self Document!

So, what is a Treat Yo’ Self document anyway?

It’s a list of your achievements. But it doesn’t have to be reserved for just high-level, award-winning accomplishments. This is more of a list of everyday successes – things that you’re not necessarily recognized for by your boss or your family, but that still demonstrate your skills, your capabilities, and your worth.

The idea is to have a running document that you jot successes down on as they happen or shortly after they happen. This is to make sure you’re capturing valuable and impactful information, and that you’re not forgetting things. If you only add content to your list every once in a while, you’ll likely forget things you’ve done. But if you add it to your list while it’s fresh, not only will you not forget about it, you’ll be able to more clearly connect it to your value as an employee.

As you do this over time and your list grows, you may want to organize it by skills or goal category, such as “financial” or “organization” to make it easier to find specific examples when you go to update your resume.

The contents of a work achievement list…

This list can really be what you want it to be. There aren’t any rules, but I want to give you some guidelines to inspire you. Get those juices flowing and understand that the most impactful work happens in the day-to-day, and that’s what you’re trying to capture here!

What are the things you are most proud of when it comes to your accomplishments? What are things you do well or standards that you consistently hold yourself to?

Is it your timeliness and punctuality? Start tracking your average response time to requests and communications.

Maybe you’re really good at building rapport and positive relationships with co-workers and colleagues, and this is something that has allowed you to accomplish goals that you otherwise wouldn’t have. Write that down!

The Treat Yo’ Self list is another tool in your career strategy to document with real examples the value you add to your employer.

Think about projects you’ve contributed to. Even if you weren’t the lead on the project, if you contributed to it, think through what you added to that project. What was the purpose and what impact did it have? And then think about the project as a whole and how successful it was. Then claim it! If it was a project that saved the company money or contributed to the development of a new line of business, claim your contribution to that. Put it down on your Treat Yo’ Self list!

Have you received a kudos e-mail from a co-worker thanking you for your help? Maybe you trained them on a work process or helped cover their workload while they were on vacation. Add it to the list!

What about your performance reviews? Did your manager make a positive comment about your work ethic or a certain skill set? Put it on the list!

What to add to your work performance list if you’re a stay-at-home mom…

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you might be wondering what you can add to your Treat Yo’ Self performance list. But when you’re “home with the kids”, we both know that there’s a lot of work that goes into that. So, let’s look at some meaningful things you can include about your performance in raising children and managing a family household that will be useful to add to a resume or to talk about in an interview, and therefore should be added to your list.

Side Note: Discover mom-friendly job boards to help you with your job hunt!

Do you oversee your family’s finances? If so, there are a plethora of skills and achievements you can add to your list. If you successfully shop for groceries and plan meals around the family budget, or shop for your kids’ clothing, school supplies, sports equipment, etc. while staying on or coming under budget regularly, put that on your list! If you use coupon or rebate apps, also add information about that as it lends itself to your technology skills.

If you regularly check on your bank accounts and retirement accounts to ensure you’re on track with your financial goals, if you compare your past utility bills to look for fluctuations in usage, if you negotiate your bills to save money, etc. you can add financial analysis skills and accomplishments to your achievement list.

If you help your kids with homework or you homeschool, you can add that to your Treat Yo’ Self list too. You can talk about how you collaborated with your child’s teacher to successfully teach your child a concept they were struggling with, or you can talk about how you stayed up to date on their curriculum and studies to help them graduate with honors, be accepted into an academic program, etc. If you homeschool, talk about all you did to set up your classroom and what you did to ensure your children met the state education requirements.  

Think through the activities you’ve planned for your kids, what it contributed to their development, and then add it to your achievement list!

If you researched and taught your kids specific skills like gardening or baking, talk about why you did that and the educational benefits. Both of these examples can be classified as STEM activities, as can many others, that promote interest in science, as well as environmental awareness and independent-living skills. Give yourself the credit that you earned, Mama!

If you provide most of the transportation for your kids around town to their activities and school and are the default parent when it comes to registering them for school and extracurricular activities, running the errands for your household, scheduling doctors’ appointments, etc., then talk about how you successfully use project management and operational skills to juggle multiple, and often competing, responsibilities to ensure everything gets done and list specific examples.

What to do with your achievement list…

As I mentioned earlier, this performance list is a running list. Meaning, it’s never really done. You should always have this list regardless of your work situation, career stage, age, etc. Life throws curveballs every now and then, so you never know when you’re going to need to come up with your list of achievements.

As for what you can use this list for, the information you include on your list can be used for a multitude of things.

If you’re about to start a job search for your next position, or if you’re applying for a promotion or a transfer to a different team, you can reference your list when you’re updating your resume.

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, use it to craft your resume when you’re ready to apply for employment. This is particularly important because it will allow you to draw those direct and strong lines to how your time out of the workforce actually helped to develop your skill set. When you’re talking with managers, they sometimes assume that time raising kids is “time off”, which translates to a vacation. But it’s not a vacation, is it? You need to spell out your accomplished goals and your contribution, and how you can take those skills and achievements that you honed as a mom and apply them to the workforce.

You can also use this list when you’re preparing to ask for a raise. When you ask for more money, even though your manager should be aware of your contributions, they, unfortunately, have a tendency to not pay as much attention to great work as they do to poor work. And even if your manager or director is aware of your awesomeness, it still hits home with them more when it’s in front of them in black and white, versus relying on their own memory. Look at your list and select the achievements that are most aligned with the value you bring to your job and put them in your formal request for a pay increase.

And, if your kids or your partner ever give you attitude, you can always whip your list out to remind them of all you do! I’m joking (sort of…)!

Side Note: If you’re at the point where you want to create or update your resume, but are unsure of how to incorporate your Treat Yo’ Self List items, I break it down for you in easy steps in the One Skilled Mama Resume Writing How-To Guide.

Remember, this is your achievement list. It’s about you, so if you’re proud of something that you think is noteworthy, then put it on your list really quick, and then go about your day. Don’t cut yourself short.

There is so much value in what you do. If you give yourself credit, then others will too!