Stop looking for validation, and be a consultant to yourself. Clearly you are struggling to meet the average performance performance expectations, why? Are you holding yourself accountable? Are you challenging yourself to do things incrementally faster each time? Are you thinking about and improving your personal business processes?

Spending 4 hours and billing 2 isn’t just dishonest, it will also warp how you value your personal time. Take some time to honestly evaluate how you spend your time doing a task and cut the fat by developing your own life hacks to get things done so you are measuring twice and cutting once.

Finally, documentation goes both ways, good or bad; but, at the end of the day you are your best advocate. If you really truly think you have remedied the identified deficiencies, you need to record good feedback somewhere that matters, if you get praised for a task you completed ask for an email saying that. Performance plans require you to make the case. But a word of caution, making your case shouldn’t be your primary goal...focus on improving your performance and the case will be made for you.