Get your work recognized: write a brag document

For whatever reasons, probably because I don’t say ‘no’ or I’m too arrogant to say ‘I don’t know’, I’m one of those people who always tries to help. I don’t keep a brag document but I do keep a folder called People where there are folders for the people I’ve helped and subfolders for each problem they’ve come to me with. On one hand it’s useful because I can recycle the code but it also helps track how I’ve spent…

9,999 people out of 10,000 telling you "don't do this, if your manager doesn't know what you did 10 months ago, the manager isn't doing their job" would have difficulty telling me what they had for breakfast last Tuesday. Keep a log of your work. In fact, keep a log of everything you do. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, it gives you an idea of where your year went, and it lets you refer back to key highlights…

Another habit I’ve made is sending praise via e-mail and CC’ing a manager, especially when great work would otherwise go unnoticed. For my peers this can be a level of sponsorship and visibility they haven’t received before, and for their managers this becomes a resource similar to a brag document when it comes to reviews. It’s 5-10 minutes out of your day but it can be hugely impactful for someone who might not normally advocate for themselves in these situations…

The author makes several great points about why it's beneficial to document your accomplishments. I've been following a similar approach for the last few years using Sublime and the PlainTasks[0] plugin to break apart projects and tasks into individual items and mark them with a timestamp when finished. I'll move the completed tasks into a new quarterly archive section to keep things clean every so often, and those sections end up providing most if not all of the information I…