Daily Reflection as a Way to Track Progress

Want to stay motivated every single day? Borrow a strategy from Harvard. Then borrow another from stand up comedy. Together, they’re a powerhouse for momentum, motivation, and mastery. Here’s how it works: Let’s start with Harvard. Researcher Teresa Amabile studied 12,000 daily work diaries across 8 companies. She wanted to know: What truly motivates people on a day to day basis? What she found changed how we understand drive. The #1 driver of daily motivation wasn’t: Money Praise Perks It was progress. The days people made progress on meaningful work were the days they felt the best. Progress isn’t a luxury. It’s a psychological necessity. So how do we make progress feel visible especially on days when it’s not? Use a “Progress Ritual.” → At the end of the day, pause. → Write down 3 small ways you moved forward. → That’s it. No fanfare. Just ritual. This works because we rarely notice our progress in real time. It gets buried under busyness, meetings, and mental noise. The act of looking back gives your brain the reward it needs to keep going. Momentum builds from meaning. Now let’s add some comedy. Young Jerry Seinfeld had one goal: write new material every day. To stay on track, he created a brilliant system. Each day he wrote, he put a big red X on his calendar. Soon, a chain of Xs formed. And here’s the key: Don’t break the chain. One red X becomes two. Two becomes ten. Ten becomes identity. Whether you’re writing, coding, or training Daily action + visual chain = long-term motivation. Summary: The Two-Part Motivation System From Harvard: Record 3 ways you made progress each day. From Seinfeld: Mark an X for each day you show up then don’t break the chain. Progress fuels purpose. Consistency fuels confidence. Apply both and you’ll stay on track especially on the tough days. Because when your days get better, your weeks get better. When your weeks get better, your months get better. When your months get better, your life gets better. It starts with one small win today.

No SWE recalls every bug they fixed. No SWE remembers every meeting they’ve attended. No SWE can pull out proof of impact on the spot when review season hits. But the best engineers I’ve worked with and have seen constantly climb the ladder in their career? They can (without having a photographic memory) How do they do it? They keep a personal worklog, they track their progress daily and it changes everything. I’ll be honest, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve nudged folks on teams to start this one habit, especially in those early career years: Here’s why Keeping a worklog is a gamechanger: → Standups: You don’t scramble for updates. You walk in, scan your log, and your work speaks for itself → Performance reviews: When it’s time to talk about promotion or pay, you’re not digging through emails trying to remember what you did. You’ve got a timeline of real wins, right there. → Self-awareness: Over months, patterns show up. You see where you’re getting stuck, where you shine, and where you can ask for help or level up. → Storytelling: Your log is the story of your growth. The little wins, the firefights, the team moments, all of it’s there. I’ve been keeping one for years and It’s never been about tracking every task, it’s about recording the meaningful things, the actual needle movers. Sometimes, I open up a year-old entry and see how far I’ve come or spot the places I kept tripping. It keeps me humble, but also shows progress nobody else sees. And recently, I've been journaling with ChatGPT, doing so, for the last 2 months. If you haven’t started a worklog, start today. Doesn’t need a fancy tool. Could be Notion, Google Docs, or a plain text file. Write down the highlights, what you built, fixed, shipped, learned. One small habit. Huge payoff over time. And when it’s time to show your value? You won’t just remember, you’ll prove it. Trust me, I wish I’d started even sooner.

This dead-simple 2-minute prompt has helped me journal every night for 1000 days in a row. I call it the “Daily Bullets”—here’s how it works: When I first started evening journaling, I made one big mistake: I had a complex, handwritten system that took 30+ minutes to complete. This was unsustainable, so every time I would fall off after a few days. Luckily, the Daily Bullets solves that problem—here’s how: Every night, as I’m winding down, I take out my phone and complete 3 steps: Step 1: I create a note with two headers: the date & “lessons/realizations" Step 2: I brain dump everything that happened that day, in order I don’t overcomplicate this. I simply put a bullet for everything that happened. • How I felt during the day • What I trained at the gym • The coffee shop I went to • What I wrote that morning • Any meetings or calls I had • Anyone I had a conversation with • Interesting things I read or listened to Step 3: I brain dump any lessons or realizations I had The list of what happened “primes” me for reflection & iteration. I’ll list habits that are working, ideas of experiments to run, people that are draining my energy, anything and everything. Then, I shut my phone and go to sleep. That’s it, that’s the entire routine. Why does it work so well? There is ZERO friction to doing this every day. • It only takes 2 minutes • I can do it from my phone, anywhere • I can do it even if my brain is working at 10% capacity Each of these is a requirement to stick with any journal practice (which was a realization from one of my Daily Bullets a few years ago). There are 3 big benefits to this routine: 1. Daily Bullets “close the loop” on my day. Rather than go to bed with swirling thoughts, this practice gets all the “open loops” out of my head and onto the page. Also, if I need to remember anything for tomorrow, I just put it at the bottom of that note so I don’t forget it. 2. Daily Bullets help me remember lessons I would have otherwise forgotten. Speaking of forgetting, most lessons slip my mind if I don’t write them down quickly. And this is why most people never make any progress. They don’t have a practice for iteration, so they make the same mistakes repeatedly. 3. Daily Bullets create a ledger of my year and set the foundation for my longer-term reviews. And finally, the best part is being able to look back on any day from my past to see exactly what happened & what I learned. At the end of every week, month, quarter, and year, I gather these recaps into one document to capture all the lessons in one spot. Aaaand that’s it. That’s the Daily Bullets system. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.