Ernesto Ramirez

December 12, 2013

Today’s QS Gallery image comes to use from John Caddell who states,

This is a simple graph showing the trend in the ratio of work accomplishments to setbacks, month over month. According to the book “The Progress Principle” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, to feel as if you’re making overall progress at work, you need a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1 in accomplishments to setbacks. Less than that will result in a feeling of stagnation or even regression. This chart shows that I keep above that level for the most part, with the exception of July, which was a lousy month for sure. This graph helps me make sense of my feelings about work – am I happy? Headed in the right direction? If the trend shows me dipping below 70% for several months in a row, it’s a sign I need to change up what I’m doing.

This was put together with a web tool that I worked on with my friend Dave Kaylor called 3Minute Journal. It captures a daily text journal entry (answering “what happened today that you’ll remember most?”) and several questions about the entry. One of the questions classifies the entry – two responses are “accomplishment” and “setback” – and these are used for the visualization.