We’ve all heard of (and dreaded) performance evaluations when you sit down with your supervisor and get their feedback on how well you’re doing. For some reason, this process always seems punitive in some way, and you’re always nervous before it even if you feel like you have been doing a good job.
Why Self-Evaluate?
There’s also something else you can do that will help you to figure out if you have been putting everything you can into your job. And that is to evaluate your own performance at work. When you evaluate your own performance, it can help you to figure out if you think you’re performing well independently of what anyone else might say. And this can be useful because it can help you to understand what you need to do more of and what you need to do less of.
How Often Do You Self-Evaluate?
So if you’re really interested in improving your performance at work, it’s a good idea to evaluate where you are every three months or so. You might start to like the process so much that you might start doing it every week or every month.
What Did You Do Well?
The first thing to do is to ask yourself what you have been doing well at work. What have been your successes? What did people recognize and appreciate you for? There are many different ways to evaluate your performance. You can go with what the numbers are telling you as well as the feedback you received from people.
Don’t be afraid to write down even the smallest thing that went well. After all, everyone needs a pat on the back every now and then, even if you have to give it to yourself.
What Needs More Effort?
Once you’re done writing down the good things, don’t forget to note the areas that you think you need to work on. Don’t think of them as the things which went wrong or the areas where you didn’t perform well. Instead, think of them as the areas where more effort is necessary. These are the areas where you would see good results if you put in more effort.
Gaining Clarity
When you start evaluating your own performance regularly, you’ll find that you have more clarity about how to proceed with your job or career. There might be things that never seem to work out no matter how much effort you put into them. And there might be things that improve with very little work. This will tell you where to focus your efforts.