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This week my Fitbit died. I don’t know if it had too much sun, too much time in the lake, or lack of recharging time, but it’s tiny screen never came back on.

Even though I lived without any sort of fitness tracker for over 30 years, living without it for the past 4 days has left me in a bit of a fitness haze.

While I used to make the effort to take the stairs, trek to the far end of the office for a bio break, or park in the back of the parking lot – I found myself taking the faster path this week. During evening walks, I used to keep moving until I hit my 10K step goal. Now, I stop when my podcast or phone call is over without a clue how close or far I was from achieving this daily goal.

I liked that this system gave me credit for the steps I took, and that it would hold me accountable to my daily goals. It’s not that this tiny wonder of a device strapped to my wrist was forcing me to walk more. It was simply an accountability system. It recorded progress; it told me my effort in terms of calories, steps, and zone minutes. It nudged me to keep going AND even celebrated my micro wins.

Sometimes I wish we had Fitbits for work.

Can you imagine a device that objectively tracks our progress, prompts us to keep going, measures effort, and celebrates the tiny wins of the day? There are many days where it’s difficult to see the progress (or lack of) we’re making when so much of the work we do at an individual level is hard to quantify.

While it’s tempting to track the quantity of meetings attended or e-mails processed – these are NOT like steps – and don’t bring you closer to work wellness or reveal your performance.

So for professionals who can’t point to quantity-based achievements each day – what can you track to see daily progress?

Let’s get tactical

Every Friday, during my Prep for Next Week sessions, I ask myself “what do I need to do to win the week?” Maybe it’s drafting a report, making a connection, lead a challenging meeting, or finishing the presentation deck. Whatever the answers, I write them down – usually at least 3 things, and then put the time blocks on my calendar to ensure I have the time to make those wins happen.

When I complete the daily progress tasks for the weekly wins, I can check them off, move the sticky to the done column, or cross them off – however you track you work! Just make sure you do something to acknowledge that it’s complete.

It’s a little like hitting your step goal for the day – the buzz of a job well done with some digital fireworks really do feel good. There’s nothing immediately life changing about achieving your daily step goal. You won’t lose 10 lbs pounds, or extend your life a year, but you can smile knowing you achieved YOUR goal for the day. On days you don’t make your goal, at least you know you need to work a little harder tomorrow.

Not making your daily work goals?

One thing I hear from professionals is that a meeting with yourself (aka a time block) is easier to skip than a meeting with other people. So true!

Taking note of the items I didn’t do at the end of the day is as important as acknowledging what I did do. It gives me an opportunity to reflect on why:

• Was it hard?
• Did something more important came up?
• Was I missing something I needed to finish?
• Or did I just not want to?

Knowing the reason why can help me be smarter about rescheduling it. For instance, if I was missing some data for a presentation, I can send a quick note to the analyst. Or if I just didn’t have the energy, I can reschedule it for my morning focus time to knock it out.

While it may be a while before our smart watches keep us accountable to our work progress, with this Weekly Win system, you can create daily accountability for yourself that can help you win the work week.

Try it this week and let me know how it goes!

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For anyone who sits in meetings for even a portion of your day, you’ll probably have at LEAST one action that requires you to e-mail someone for something. For many people, this to-do goes in a notebook, on a sticky note, digital kanban, or into a task list that then gets actioned at a later time.

What if there was an easier way to manage these simple to-dos that fill up our work systems?

As someone who is always on a quest to work better, I can tell you that these minor to-dos often took up valuable time as my brain had to write them down in one system, only to have to action them from my Inbox at a different time.

For the past few months I’ve been working to capture these actions that require an e-mail to have their first action happen in my Inbox by starting an e-mail on the spot, or “e-mail starts” for short.

How to use e-mail starts:

1. Open a new e-mail message at the start of e-mail meeting.
2. As you take an action to follow up with another person, you start the e-mail to them right then and there in the meeting by recording the rough idea of what you need to communicate.
3. Leave this draft e-mail open on your desktop and open another blank so you’re ready for the next one.
4. Then during any 5-15 minute breaks in the day that are too short to get into a big project, you can finish off these starts and get them sent, OR
5. Use the wrap up time at the end of each day to finish off the e-mail starts from the day.

As I experimented with this new method and began to tell people about it, I got some really great questions from some skeptical friends:

Q: Why leave it open on your desktop? Couldn’t you just leave it in your draft folder?

A: Yes, you could. For me, leaving it in my draft folder made it too easy to ignore. Because I was already in the practice of closing Outlook each day, this forced me to finish these e-mails starts without letting them linger.

Q: Why not finish the note in the meeting?

A: I’m fast at taking notes, but slow to write a thoughtful e-mail. To actually fully compose and send an e-mail, I would have to stop paying attention in the meeting and may miss something.

I’ve been using this method for a few months now, and have found it to be a very simple, and effective way to action these communication to-dos without clogging up my task system.

Do you do this already? Or is it a new method? Go ahead and try it this week!