Why your manager remembers 6 weeks of your year

Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis · Aug 14, 2026 · 15m

Good work doesn't speak for itself, and it never has. In this episode I tell the story of the year I built something for around 200 people, supported it for nine months, and then sat in my review with almost nothing specific to say about it. Not because the work wasn't there, but because I couldn't retrieve it.

We start with two things that get handed out at work and are easy to confuse: praise, and praise with evidence underneath it. One feels lovely on a Friday afternoon. The other is what actually turns into a title, a pay rise or whatever you're working towards.

Then I look at what recent…