# Brag document A brag document is a running record of your accomplishments at work, kept so you can recall them when it matters: performance reviews, promotion cases, a change of manager. Julia Evans popularized the idea in "Get your work recognized: write a brag document" (28 June 2019). The problem it solves: you forget much of what you did, your manager forgets even more, and a manager needs specifics to argue for you. Some valuable work is also easy to overlook because it doesn't produce a visible artifact. Evans suggests including: - Projects, with your contribution and the impact or results - Collaboration and mentorship - Design docs and documentation - Company-building work, such as hiring or improving processes - What you learned - Outside-of-work contributions: blog posts, talks, open source - Goals for this year and the next - For "fuzzy" work: the goal, what you did, and its effects Update it every couple of weeks, or in one longer session every 6 to 12 months, and share it with your manager and peer reviewers. Evans also suggests running a group "brag workshop" with coworkers. A weekly work log, as in Gergely Orosz's template, makes the document cheap to write. The aim is an accurate record, not an inflated one. ## References - Julia Evans, "Get your work recognized: write a brag document", 2019: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/ - Gergely Orosz, "A Work Log Template for Software Engineers": https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/work-log-template-for-software-engineers/ ## Related - [[Small wins]] - [[What some see as bragging may be seen as inspiration by others]] - [[Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you]] - [[Journaling]] - [[Career Design]] - [[Weekly review process]] - [[Periodic reviews]]