Brag Document: Template and How to Keep One

A brag document is a running list of what you did at work and what came of it, kept all year so you don't have to rebuild it from memory at review time. You add a line when you ship something, help someone or get thanked. When a self-evaluation or promotion case comes around, you pick highlights from the list instead of staring at a blank form.

The idea was popularized by software engineer Julia Evans, whose 2019 post Get your work recognized: write a brag document is the post most often credited for it. She calls it a common tactic that also goes by other names, such as hype document. Below: a template to copy, a filled-in example, an update schedule, and the steps for turning it into a review.

What is a brag document?

A brag document (or brag doc) is a personal record of your accomplishments, written in plain language and updated as you go. Evans describes it as a document listing your accomplishments that you share with your manager and the people writing your peer reviews, so they can speak up for you with facts (Evans, 2019).

It is not a résumé. A résumé is short, public and written for strangers; a brag doc is long, messy and written for you first. It keeps the hard-to-measure work too: the onboarding guide you wrote, the incident you stayed late for, the colleague you coached through a first release.

Why a brag document works

Memory is a poor record of a year. A 2015 replication of Ebbinghaus's classic experiment found the same pattern he reported in the 1880s: forgetting is fastest soon after learning and slows down over time (Murre and Dros, 2015). That study had one participant learning nonsense syllables, not work, but the shape will feel familiar to anyone trying to recall February.

Timing can also tilt a rating. In a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology, 333 undergraduates rated four videotaped lectures in which one good or one poor lecture was placed at different points among average ones. Their overall ratings showed a recency effect for the good performance (Steiner and Rain, 1989). The same paper also examined primacy effects, where early events dominate. It was a lab study with students, so treat it as a pointer, not proof about your manager. The risk is familiar anyway: October crowds out March.

Evans puts it plainly: you probably don't remember everything you did, and your manager probably doesn't either (Evans, 2019). A brag doc also helps when you get a new manager halfway through the year, and it matters more for remote and hybrid staff, whose work can be easier to miss (why remote work goes unseen).

Brag doc template (copy and paste)

This template follows the sections Evans suggests, plus feedback and a monthly log. Paste it into any doc, notes app or Markdown file you open weekly.

# Brag document: [Your name], [Year]

## Goals
- This year:
- Next year:

## Projects
### [Project name] ([start month] to [end month])
- What I did:
- Result: (numbers if you have them, effects if you don't)
- Evidence: [link to doc, dashboard, ticket, thread]

## Collaboration and mentoring
- [Who you helped, reviewed, unblocked or taught, and what changed]

## Design, documentation and process
- [Docs, specs, runbooks, process fixes]

## Keeping the company running
- [Hiring, interviews, onboarding, on-call, incidents]

## Learning
- [Skills, courses, tools you picked up, and where you used them]

## Feedback and praise
- [Date] [Who]: "[What they said]" [link]

## Outside the job description
- [Talks, writing, open source, internal communities]

## Monthly log
### [Month]
- [One line per thing worth remembering]

A filled-in example

Entries for a hypothetical support team lead, Priya, might look like this:

The shape: what you did, what changed, where the proof is. For hard-to-measure work, Evans suggests writing down the goal, what you did and any effects you noticed, even indirect ones. If you need help phrasing results, see these work accomplishments examples.

How often to update your brag document

We suggest weekly. Ten minutes on a Friday is easier to keep than one long session before the review: add the week's lines to the monthly log. Ticket numbers, names and links are easy to find on Friday and hard to find in November.

Evans notes that some people update every couple of weeks, while she does a longer session every six months or a year (Evans, 2019). Either works, but the longer the gap, the more you depend on what your tools happened to keep.

Three habits make the schedule stick:

1. Save praise the moment it arrives. Copy the message and link into "Feedback and praise". It is the easiest section to lose.
2. Reuse what you already write. If you send a weekly report, your brag doc can be a monthly pass over those reports.
3. Tidy once a quarter. Move monthly log lines into the right sections and add results that only became visible later.

How to turn it into a self-evaluation or promotion case

The brag doc is the raw material. The review is the edit.

1. Read the form first. Note what your company assesses: goals, values, competencies, or the expectations for the next level.
2. Pick three to five highlights per area. Choose the work with the clearest results, not the longest list.
3. Lead with the result. "Cut billing tickets out of the top three" before "rewrote 22 articles".
4. Attach the evidence. Keep the links from your brag doc; reviewers trust a claim they can check.
5. Name the gaps honestly. One sentence on what you would do differently reads as judgment, not weakness. As Evans puts it, "you don't have to try to make your work sound better than it is" (Evans, 2019).
6. Share it before the review. Give your manager the doc or a summary a week or two early, so they can use it in their own write-up.

For a promotion case, sort the highlights by the criteria for the level you are aiming for, and show a pattern over several months rather than one big win. The full process is in how to write a self-evaluation.

What to keep out of it

A brag doc collects a lot of work detail in one place, so set a few rules early:

• Keep the full doc where your employer allows it, such as your company drive, and check the policy before copying work details to a personal account.
• Make any personal copy interview-safe: results you could say out loud ("cut ticket volume by a third"), not client names, salaries or unreleased numbers.
• Link to colleagues' messages rather than pasting them anywhere outside the team, and ask before quoting a private one.

A brag document you don't have to remember to update

The weak point of every brag doc is the Friday slot you skip. DoneThat handles the logging part: it reconstructs your workday from screen and app activity (screenshots are processed and deleted, never stored) and writes a daily summary of what you worked on. Over a year, those summaries become the running log, and you can export them as CSV or query them through the API or MCP with an AI assistant. As with any desktop tool, check your employer's policy first; apps you exclude are redacted on your machine before anything is analyzed.

It does not write your brag doc for you. You still decide which work mattered, add the results that came later, and phrase the highlights. What it removes is the reconstruction: the evidence is already collected when review season arrives.

Frequently asked questions

Should I share my brag document with my manager?

Usually, yes, at least a summary of it. Julia Evans recommends sharing it with your manager and peer reviewers so they can advocate for you with specifics (Evans, 2019). Send it a week or two before the review is written.

How long should a brag document be?

As long as it needs to be. The log can run to many pages over a year because it is raw material. What you share at review time should be shorter: three to five highlights per area, each with a result and a link.

Start your brag document this week

Copy the template, add what you did last month while you still remember it, and book a weekly slot. When the review form arrives, you will be choosing highlights, not reconstructing a year.

Sources

• Evans, J. (28 June 2019). Get your work recognized: write a brag document. Julia Evans's blog.
• Murre, J. M. J. and Dros, J. (2015). Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. One participant (the second author), nonsense syllables, intervals from 20 minutes to 31 days.
• Steiner, D. D. and Rain, J. S. (1989). Immediate and delayed primacy and recency effects in performance evaluation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(1), 136 to 142. Lab study; Study 1 had 333 undergraduate raters.

Written by Don, DoneThat's AI coach (LinkedIn) - so this article is AI-written. Every cited study and quote is linked next to the claim and in the Sources list; the example entries describe a hypothetical person. Published by DoneThat (Letss B.V., Amsterdam). More about DoneThat; corrections and questions go to support.