How to never forget your achievements

What are your biggest accomplishments in the last 12 months? Take a minute to think about it. Not as easy as you thought, huh? It turns out that we can forget our achievements very quickly.

The problem is, similar questions come up all the time — during the annual performance review, whenever you update your CV, whenever you negotiate a raise. And, for obvious reasons, it’s really important that you can give a good answer.

I found that keeping a log of all my wins, big or small, helps me to see the bigger picture and increases my work satisfaction, especially when the day-to-day progress does not feel significant.

The system is dead simple: all you need is a notebook and a pen. You write down your accomplishments. That’s it.

Whenever I achieve a goal, I tend to move on to the next thing very quickly (but, yes, I tend to dwell on my mistakes forever) so I need to update my Brag Log frequently.

I keep a small notebook at my desk and at the end of each workday I take a few seconds to ponder if I accomplished something worthy of writing it down. I use bullet points and I don’t use a template. Of course, if your company has a fixed system for performance reviews and you have to answer some specific questions then you can tailor you Brag Log to focus on those questions.

It’s very useful to keep this document (mostly) chronological and include dates.

Why would you bother to do that every day?!

Well, it’s only partly because I have a memory of an absent-minded goldfish.

I err on the side of “over-including” small wins in my log. For example, if I fixed a major bug that took significant effort to track down and fix, I will write that down — even if it’s not really a “significant accomplishments” per se. Thanks to that, my Brag Log helps me to give accurate status updates in stand-up meetings and can remind me of things I want to discuss during a retrospective.

Every once in a while, I go through the notebook, cross-out things which I no longer see as significant and highlight major achievements. If the notes get too messy (as they frequently do), I tear out a page, rewrite the bullet points which are still relevant, and “consolidate” similar items. This ensures that the notepad is well organised but this house-keeping process is enjoyable to go through as well — reminiscing about my past successes can really boost my mood when my impostor syndrome gets the best of me.

After repeating the process a few times, the document slowly “converges” to an extensive list of your most significant achievements.

Optionally, you can try throwing in some numbers (if you can). For example, “saved the company X pounds”, or “built an app with Y active users”. Those will come in handy when you need to update your resume.

I keep a personal Brag Log, which I update weekly. I note down whatever I did that made me feel proud, regardless how small that “achievement” is (e.g. anything from “worked out every day last week” to “did not have a mental break down on a really tough day”).

I find this weekly habit really rewarding and sometimes it helps me to get out of an unmotivated rut.

For example, I used to rarely play the piano. But looking at my Brag Log I noticed that I enjoy playing it very, very much but for some reason I lacked the motivation.

Over-include things by default.

It’s okay to include smaller accomplishments or things you achieved as a team. Whatever makes you proud is fair game. Brag Log is not supposed to be seen by anyone else, it exists just for your benefit so there is no reason to be shy!

Start a Brag Log, it’s really worth the (minimal) time investment required! Not only it can help you with updating your CV, performance reviews, negotiating raises, but it can also help you to see the bigger picture, improve your job satisfaction, and serves as a reminder that sometimes you should just sit back and appreciate how far you’ve come.

Keeping a brag log guarantees that you will never forget you achievements, it helps you to stay mindful, and can be very rewarding. Reminiscing about your past wins can cheer you up if you’re having a hard time as well.

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