Turn your Daily To-do List into a Raise or Promotion

How to show off your superstar status in a professional way

Chances are that your manager probably has no idea what you do all day. This is even more likely to be the case for those that work remotely or are part of remote or distributed teams.

Your manager (probably) isn’t trying to ignore you, but just think about all the information they receive and need to process on a daily basis. On top of managing you and all of your coworkers, your manager also has their own career to take care of, which is filled with meetings, personal challenges, and working with their own manager too.

Sure, you catch up with your manager sometimes in weekly or monthly team meetings (or even more regularly), but these meetings usually aren’t designed for you to provide detail and depth around what you have been working and what you have achieved. Similarly, performance reviews (both annual and semi-annual) are designed to cover a significant period of time, meaning they are often so high level that it’s hard to get specific about your value add, your development needs, and your professional goals.

The people who get promoted and raises are the people who visibly add specific, meaningful value. Specifically, in order to promote you or give you a raise, your manager needs to know about your achievements and any specific value you have added.

If you are a superstar on your team (which I bet you are, if you’re reading this), then your manager probably just assumes you’re doing pretty well day-in-day-out. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, however, chances are that you aren’t happy doing the same thing forever and getting the same pseudo positive feedback.

If you are striving for more, it’s imperative you have to share more and make yourself and your value known. But, how do you go about sharing this information professionally and without coming across as a braggart?

How to professionally share your value in a few minutes each day

A lot of people find sharing their successes upward to be really hard. No one wants to feel like they’re bragging, and many of us undervalue the many things we do and think they aren’t worth sharing.

But that’s wrong. The only way your manager can know everything you do and how valuable it all is, is if you show them. And it is possible to do without bragging. So here’s what you’re going to do at the end of each day and at the end of each week:

At the end of each day, you are going to send your manager a short, bullet-pointed list of your accomplishments, what you plan to do next (tomorrow), and any roadblocks or challenges as well as any other comments you may have. You can start by sending these lists via email at the end of each day, or if you’d prefer a more streamlined approached, you can ask your manager to get your team onboard TribePulse.

On Friday afternoon, again, you are going to send something very similar. Except, this time it will be slightly higher level and just a summary of your daily lists.

Both of these lists need to be skimmable, easy to understand, and to-the-point. They should take less than 10 minutes to write, because you’ll draw all the pertinent info from your to-do lists.

And it’s going to help your manager see the valuable impact that you’ve had throughout the week 😁

Why status updates or progress reports are one of the most powerful tools

Simply put, if you want a raise or you want to get promoted, your work can’t get lost. A status update or progress report also gives you a chance to communicate your questions and upcoming work plans in advance, you can make sure you are working as efficiently as possible every day.

Have you ever worked on perfecting a project, only to hear from your manager after hours of work that they actually wanted you to do something else? Nothing feels worse — not only does the time you spent feel like a waste, but now you are behind. And on top of that, your manager had to correct you for not knowing the right priorities.

A status update helps you communicate the great work you’ve already done, and be prepared to do the most important work as amazingly as possible.

And the most important part, it makes you known to your manager. It helps you engage in an ongoing conversation with them — they can’t help but see you as an active member of the team.

When your manager knows how amazing you are, they can advocate for you — which is how you get raises, promotions, and new opportunities.

None of us works in a vacuum (not even remote workers!). It is only when other people value us and want to make us successful that we can truly succeed.

How to write a super effective status update

As mentioned earlier, your daily status updates should be well-structured and skimmable. At TribePulse we structure daily pulses into 3 sections, and we recommend that you take this approach regardless of whether you are using TribePulse or sending status emails to your manager. By keeping to a fixed structure, not only will it be easier and faster for you to write, but the information will also be easier to process for your manager. The 3 sections are:

1. Accomplishments: Start by telling your manager what you’ve accomplished for the day. This should be short and to-the-point. Sure, you do a lot of work and this status update is meant to capture that. But you should be selective in the level of detail you go into, if your manager wants further information, they can always ask and you’d rather your manager read your status update rather than avoiding it because it just looks like a huge block of text.
2. Outstanding: Next, list-off what tasks still need to be done. In many ways, this acts as a to-do list for the next day. From this list, your manager will be able to see where you will likely focus your attention next, giving them the opportunity to provide further direction or to redirect you.
3. Challenges and other comments: Finally, you want to raise any roadblocks you have been facing. Most managers will prefer that problems are raised earlier than later, and this is the place to do it. This section is also perfect for raising any comments or questions you may have.

For teams on TribePulse this structure should be very familiar, our daily pulses are structured in this way so that team members only need to go through a fill in the gaps.

Status updates should help you feel on track too

One of the best side benefits of sending daily status updates is that it helps you to see where you’re spending your time too. Do you feel busy all week long, but don’t have much to show for it when it comes time to write your status? That’s a good lesson that perhaps you need to prioritize other kinds of work.

A status update can also help you avoid that Monday morning “what am I going to do today” feeling. Instead of flying by the seat of your pants or trying to remember where you left off last week, your status email helps you figure out on Friday what you need to do on Monday.

No wasted morning time or false starts on projects your boss doesn’t actually want you spending time on. Just smooth sailing, clear communication, and lots of accomplished goals.

Try sending status updates this week and let us know how it goes!

Status updates work for both remote and non-remote workers. I am sure that you will start seeing the benefits of this process almost right away. If nothing else, you will start to see an ease in your relationship with your manager and an increase in trust, as they begin to know exactly what you do every day. If your manager hasn’t had much experience with remote teams before, this will also ease their anxiety around remote workers being unproductive!

You’ll become a superstar by always knowing what you should be doing, and when you are a superstar, you will be someone your manager thinks of for opportunities.

We’d love to hear about how your status updates go! Share your experiences in the comments below or send an email to contact@tribepulse.com!

If you wish to learn more about how to engage your remote workforce, we invite you to check out our other content by joining the More signal, less noise Tribe.