Day-to-day successes? What's that?

Do you ever have days (weeks? months?) when you have worked all day – and you don’t know what the heck you’ve accomplished? Seriously? You’ve attended a lot of meetings (at least 4, plus 2 impromptu), sent off 20+ emails (I even counted!), talked to 10 different people (I count IM, phone, or in person)… but what have you actually completed? 

Suddenly, you look down at the clock.

3:30 PM 

Holy crap! It’s practically time to leave (in 4 hours)! Where has the day gone?! You need to get cranking on all the action items you got during the meetings, so that tomorrow, you can report back in the next 4 meetings (that of course, were set up today)? Oh, what about all those things you SHOULD have done (in excess of the action items), but failed to even peek at? (Wait, did I even eat anything today?)

Yeah, really. I’m serious. Welcome to my daily world called work. 

It’s been one of those weeks – and sometimes, I just don’t know how to deal with it. 

I’m kind of OCD (isn’t this entire blog entry proof of that?). I am completely driven by accomplishing tasks – a check mark by a task is a great goal for the day!  (How about 10?)

Yea, well… I am starting to really fear those days are history. The farther I progress into my management ‘experience,’ the more I realize that I need to find a different way of measuring my day-to-day ‘success.’

Every day this week, I’ve set myself up with my own list of tasks to complete. I’m going to write this much; I’m going to get back to all these people (action items!); I’m going to read this for guidance; I’m going to set up this meeting for collaboration. And then, every day, I fail miserably to get it all done. Someone asks for help – someone comes by – a new meeting appears on my calendar – a new issue rears its ugly head – SOMETHING HAPPENS. By the end of the day, I’m exhausted. Don’t get me wrong – I have to get some of my work done – it’s not like I sit here and blog all day (although judging how much I always get assigned to, that may be what some people think). In the end, I end up prioritizing my day based on what’s critical (due yesterday) versus semi-critical (due in 2 days). It’s a constant shuffle. The constant – setting expectations so that I don’t miss deadlines… because I can’t physically keep up.

So, what’s a good way to measure my daily successes?

Is it the number of emails I send? (I can’t tell you how many emails I draft and forget to send)
Is it the number of hours worked straight without moving a muscle? (no potty breaks! you have no time! Work, work, work!)
Is it how early or late I started sending emails (or maybe I should have never stopped?)
Is it the number of rows in a spreadsheet I’ve reviewed, commented, or added? (Is 250+ enough?)

What do I use as a guideline? 

ACK!