If you’ve ever sat down to write a self-review and immediately forgotten every good thing you’ve done in the past quarter or year, you’re not alone.
It’s like your brain gets stage fright the second someone says “So, what did you accomplish?”
Cue the panic scroll through Slack, old emails, and calendar invites, trying to reconstruct a whole year of wins from memory.
That’s where a brag document comes in.
What is a brag document?
A brag document (also called a brag sheet, hype document, brag folder, work journal, or accomplishment tracker) is a personal record where you regularly log your wins, projects, and positive feedback to remember your impact over time. It’s used to prepare for performance reviews, job interviews, or portfolio updates—basically, anywhere you need proof of your work and progress.
Unlike your résumé or LinkedIn profile, a brag document is primarily for you. Some people share them with their manager during review time, but I recommend using your brag document as a source of information, not something you need to email your boss every quarter.
A lot of people have some informal form of a brag document without even realizing it. For a while, I saved a Google doc with some of my biggest accomplishments from previous jobs. I started late, so I only added the big things I could remember.
I know some people have a folder full of screenshots of praise or shoutouts they’ve gotten. A brag document is just a more organized (sometimes) and intentional version of it.
What do you put inside a brag document?
There are no set rules for what should be included in your brag document.
But as someone who likes structure, I came up with the Small, Medium, Big, and Beyond framework.
Here’s how it works:
- Small wins: The everyday stuff that keeps things running smoothly. It’s the work that rarely gets celebrated but makes a difference.
- Examples: Fixing a broken process, mentoring a teammate, smoothing handoffs between teams, cleaning up messy data.
- Medium wins: These are the projects that sit between “everyday work” and “career-defining.” You probably didn’t think to write them down, but you should.
- Examples: Helping run a webinar for another team, writing internal documentation, leading a mini-initiative that made someone else’s job easier.
- Big wins: The headline projects that show measurable impact. The kind of stuff you bring up when you’re asking for a promotion. They usually take weeks or months of planning and execution.
- Examples: Leading a major campaign, launching a new product feature, spearheading a cross-team project.
- Beyond the job: Not tied to your core role, but still valuable. These contributions shape culture and show leadership beyond your title.
- Examples: Running an employee affinity group or social club, organizing offsites, welcoming new hires, or helping onboard interns.
But generally speaking, if it’s something you’re proud of or can see yourself mentioning during a performance review or job interview, add it to your brag document.
Your brag document can also be as detailed as you want it to be. But at a minimum, every entry should include:
- What you did/accomplished
- What job it was at
- When it happened (can just be the month/year)
- Details like why it was important and what you did exactly
- Supporting resources (links, screenshots, files)
- Measurable impact
Since your brag document spans your entire career, the more details you include, the easier it’ll be to recall things when you need a specific example.
For instance, if you’re applying for a job and one of the requirements is experience with a specific tool, you should be able to go into your brag document and find an example of a time you did something cool using that tool (that rhymes!).
What does a brag document look like?
I’ve seen a ton of variations of brag documents. Everything from spreadsheets to Google Docs and complex Notion templates.
But I personally use Brag Doc. Brag Doc makes it easy to add, track, and search through all your wins, ask for Kudos, and build a shareable brag document all in one tool (it’s free).
Here’s an example of what an exported brag document can look like (note: you can completely customize what gets shown, including the details you share).
But you can also search through everything you’ve added in your brag doc to find specific examples for performance reviews and interviews.
I created Brag Doc because the templates I found online were too manual, required a lot of customization, and couldn’t do everything I needed. I wanted to make the easiest and best way for anyone to create a brag document. Give it a try and let me know how I did!
What a brag document helps with
A brag document isn’t just a happy list of “Yay me!” moments. It’s one of the most useful tools that you’ll ever use in your career.
1. Performance reviews that won’t make you sweat
When review season comes around, everyone frantically tries to piece together a year’s worth of output.
Now, suddenly you find yourself scrolling through your calendar at 2 a.m. like a detective trying to piece together what happened in March.
But in your brag document, you already have the receipts: the dates, the results, potentially even a note from your manager stating ‘You absolutely saved that launch.’” All those notes can go straight from your brain to your evaluation.
Never blank screens. Never “I think I worked on that project…”.
2. Conversations about promotions
Here's the truth we all learn too late in life: Chances are your manager doesn't know (or remember) half the things you've accomplished. Not because they lack interest, but because they’re human.
They’re in charge of multiple people, including themselves. As harsh as it sounds, it’s not their job to know everything you’ve done. It’s your job to tell them and remind them.
This is why a brag sheet really does turn the tables.
When promotion cycles or new openings come up, the conversation shouldn’t be a blank slate.
You should be able to confidently say: “This is what I’ve done, and how I’ve grown. And here’s the proof”
Let's take an example, like Maya, a product designer. Maya had been quietly knocking it out of the park for months: mentoring junior folks, fixing handoffs, running design sprints.
But when review season comes around, Maya blanks on all of the things she did. So she ends up underselling herself and only mentions the one or two most recent things she accomplished.
It might not sound like a big deal, but the ability to tell the story of what you’ve done can make a huge difference in who gets promoted and who stays at the same level for years. Especially at larger companies. That’s one of the things I realized later in my career that I wish I had learned sooner.
3. Job interviews that sound confident, not rehearsed
A brag document is your secret prep sheet.
When someone asks, “Tell me about a time when you made an impact,” you won’t have to rummage through your brain because you’ll have access to a whole library of experiences at the end of your fingers.
So, because you’ve been tracking them as the activities occur, they’ll be as fresh in your mind as brand new memories. You can remember the details like the metrics, the challenges, and the lessons learned.
This is the difference between “I worked on a marketing campaign” and “I redesigned the way we onboard our customers and saw a 23% increase in activation.”
I’ve been on interview panels, and anyone who can recall specific examples always stands out. But few people can because they don’t have things well documented, and rely on their memories (which is usually unreliable).
4. Everyday self-advocacy
I know a lot of people who suffer from at least one of these:
- Chronic downplayer
- Imposter syndrome
I’ve dealt with both to different degrees, but keeping a brag document has helped a lot.
I’m the person who will do something really cool at work, and downplay it or not sell it hard enough. Brag documents help combat downplaying your wins by normalizing celebrating yourself. I can’t explain why, but the more I’ve added to my brag document, the more comfortable I’ve gotten with talking about my wins.
Part of it is because I can finally remember them (check out my story about why I started keeping my brag document to learn more about that).
But I think the other part is documenting my wins has become such a habit that it doesn’t feel narcissistic. It's just telling the truth.
For people who struggle with imposter syndrome, a brag document can be surprisingly grounding. Imposter syndrome is believing you just got lucky or fooled everyone into thinking you’re capable. Your brain just explains away all your wins.
In my experience, brag documents quiet that inner voice by giving you evidence that’s hard to argue with. You have all the work you put in over the years documented. It’s not an overnight process, but if you consistently document your wins, advocating for yourself at work becomes a lot easier (and less awkward).
Start building your brag document ASAP
The best time to start your brag document is now. Don’t wait until it’s performance review time or when you’re looking for a job. Start documenting your wins, and adding what you can remember from your old jobs.
That way, it’s ready and updated whenever you need it. I highly recommend using Brag Doc to create yours. It’s better than any template I’ve used and any docs/Notion spaces I’ve tried creating from scratch.
