The One Secret To Acing Your Performance Evaluation

Imagine this. It’s the end of the year. Multiple projects are behind schedule and over budget. You have family visiting over the holiday and your family will travel as well. On top of that, you have to prepare to evaluate your team even while you’re preparing for your own performance evaluation.

Oh wait, what happened during the year? You have an eerie feeling that lots has happened but you can’t immediately locate the details, especially the most important ones.

What to do?

By the time many of us are scrambling to distill a year’s worth of hard work into a brief narrative that will make us shine during our performance evaluation, lots of memories have already been lost. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s what you can do now at the top of the year.

1. Get on the same page. Ask your boss to sit down with you and discuss these questions (sent ahead of your discussion to give them time to ponder):

• If you could accomplish three major things for our immediate team this year, what might those be?
• What are the most urgent changes you’d like to see our entire organization embark on?
• How can I help?

If your organization follows a standard performance evaluation template, chances are you have already established your objectives and action items for the coming year. This conversation will help you connect those to the big picture of what your manager wants to see the organization accomplish.

2. Write your story. Once a month, write your “If You’re Only Remembered As” Story. (IYORS) Here’s how it works.

• At the end of each month, ask yourself this question, “If the only thing my boss can remember about my performance this month is this story, and this story alone, what would it be?”
• Take three minutes to go through your calendar day by day in the past month to jog your memories of various significant moments at work.
• Then, give yourself the following writing prompt: “Upper level management might have a shrinking memory, but they have a little bit of space for me. What is one short story they could remember about my performance?” Or, ask yourself a different way: “What is one thing that my bosses will remember about me this month?”
• Start writing. Don’t over think.

Use “IRS” to help you structure your story:

• I – Intriguing beginning
• R – Riveting middle
• S – Satisfying end

In a previous article on performance evaluations, I’ve shown how you can use this structure to write a three-sentence story, which comes in handy if your boss is pressed for time.

• Edit this story to 500 words or fewer. If you’re over with the word limit, you have probably included unnecessary details.
• Share your draft with trusted colleagues, friends or partners who know your work intimately. Ask if they are moved or impressed by the story. Did you undersell or overblow your contribution? If they were your managers and read the story, what would they make of who you are?
• Save your story. Back it up. Repeat once a month, preferably at the end of the month. During your annual performance evaluations, your future-self will thank your present-self profusely!

How can you make sure you actually sit yourself down and write the story? Here are three ideas:

1. Block out time, say every Sunday afternoon at 4 pm, to write. Chances are, if it’s in your calendar, it will happen.
2. Get a buddy to write with you. Much like having a workout partner, you will more likely keep going back to the gym if you have someone to keep you accountable.
3. Set a calendar notification for the same time and date every month, reminding you to write. Populate it with prompts, such as:

• • Which goals have you accomplished in part or in full?
  • What did it take to get this done?
  • Who helped?
  • What strengths of character did you demonstrate as you worked on this?

Setting aside time to reflect on your performance will not only help your accomplishments win notice. It will also change your performance itself. Rather than working in isolation, you’ll find connection to the organization’s mission. And as you reflect monthly on how you want to be remembered, you will infuse your work with a sense of the kind of legacy you want to leave and the kind of person you want to be.

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This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.