Work & Achievement · A Decembers list
The work you were glad to have done
Not the promotion or the plaque. The stretch where you knew, walking to the parking lot, that you'd gotten something right — the fix that finally held, the thing that shipped, the team you pulled through.
This is the list for that work. One accomplishment per line, as much as it earned — what it was, and why it still stands out.
Free to start. Private from the first word.
Where this list lives
This is a list in Decembers — the place a life gets written down one question at a time.
Decembers asks the questions no one thought to ask, keeps the answers in one permanent Chronicle, and holds them on one Timeline that reads in order. You answer. Decembers does the writing.
- Lists
- A list for every kind of life, and every turn one takes. Pick one and start answering.
- Timeline
- Your answers arrange themselves in order. Seeing a whole life laid out this way is something else.
- Inner Circle
- Not social media. The few people you name are the only ones it is ever shared with.
Begin with one list. The rest follows.
One line is enough
Write down the one project you'd tell a stranger about, and the rest come with it — the late nights, the person who doubted you, the day it finally worked.
A resume lists titles and dates. It never says what the work actually was: the process that was broken until you fixed it, the account everyone had given up on, the machine you kept running with parts you weren't supposed to have. Nobody wrote that down. The people you did it with remember, and then they retire, and then it's just you who knows what it took.
A book about your career is a big thing to sit down and write, so it never gets written. A list is different. You put down one line today — the thing you built in 1988 — and next week another comes back to you, the obstacle nobody thought you'd get past. Over time the list holds what no performance review ever captured: not the rank you reached, but the work itself, and why it mattered.
How it works
- 01
Pick this list
It’s waiting, already written. There is no blank page to face.
- 02
Fill in what comes
A year, a line, a photograph. Five minutes or an hour.
- 03
Invite who was there
They add what you forgot. You decide what stays.
- 04
Share it, or don’t
One quiet page for your Inner Circle. No link, no feed.
The work that ends up on this list
The thing you built or fixed
The system, the tool, the process that didn't exist or didn't work until you made it. Maybe it was a spreadsheet that replaced three days of manual counting, or a line you redesigned so people stopped getting hurt. Say what it replaced and what it made possible.
The people you brought along
The team you led through a bad year, the new hire you took a chance on, the crew that trusted you when the plan changed midstream. Some of the best work you did was in other people, and it's still walking around out there doing its job.
The one that cost you something
The project you fought for when it wasn't popular, the deadline you hit by sheer stubbornness, the call you made that turned out right. Name the obstacle, because the pride lives in what stood in the way.
By the kind of work it was
- Built
- The thing that wasn't there before you made it — a program, a department, a product, a way of doing things that outlasted you.
- Fixed
- The broken process, the failing account, the machine everyone had written off, that you got working and kept working.
- Led
- The team, shift, or project you carried through a move, a crunch, or a year nobody enjoyed, and came out the other side intact.
- Created
- The design, the campaign, the training, the piece of work that was yours from a blank page to a finished thing.
- Taught
- The people you brought up — the apprentice, the new class, the successor who does it better than you did now.
- Saved
- The money, the time, the jobs, or the safety you protected by catching what others missed.
Other lists you may like
Start with any one of them. Every answer lands on the same Timeline.
Begin
A record of the work you'd want remembered
Not the title on the door, but what you actually did behind it. Start with the one project you're proudest of, and put down what it was.