Your Year in Three Bullets: The Farce of the Performance Review
The cursor blinks. It’s a patient, rhythmic pulse of white on a sea of digital paper, a tiny, indifferent star in the corporate cosmos. The box is labeled ‘Key Accomplishments: Q1,’ and my mind is a total, cavernous blank. What did I do in February? I know I existed. I have calendar entries to prove it, a trail of digital breadcrumbs leading through meetings with titles like ‘Synergy Touchpoint’ and ‘Pre-Align Scoping.’ But what did I *accomplish*? My fingers hover over the keyboard, a low-grade hum of anxiety vibrating up from my desk. This single, sterile form is supposed to contain the sum of my professional existence for the last 359 days, a narrative I’m forced to write about a past I can barely recall for a future that’s already been decided.
We tell ourselves a story about this ritual. We call it ‘development,’ ‘feedback,’ ‘alignment.’ We pretend it’s a collaborative dialogue between a thoughtful manager and a motivated employee, a chance to chart a course for the future. I used to believe that story. I honestly did. I once spent 49 hours, spread over two weeks, crafting the perfect self-assessment. I built a spreadsheet. I dug through old emails and project plans, quantifying every single achievement with hard data. I wrote a soaring narrative of growth and impact, a document so compelling it could have been nominated for a literary award. I was proud. I was ready. My
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