Make the case for your work

There are still a few months left before the end of the year, which makes this a good time to start thinking about something we often leave until much too late: remembering what we actually accomplished.

Last week, a conversation with my manager about performance got me thinking again about something I’ve been telling people I manage for years: keep your own record.

We tend to have a surprisingly short memory when it comes to performance. If you do something genuinely important in February, it might be recognised at the time, but by December the details have already started to fade.

The details disappear. What was difficult about it? What did you actually do? What changed as a result? Who noticed? What evidence did you have at the time?

Your manager should remember some of this too. I certainly try to. But a lot can change over a year: you might move to another team, your manager might change, or the people who saw your contribution first-hand might simply no longer be around. And even when none of that happens, nobody sees everything you do or remembers your year as well as you can.

There’s also an important distinction between doing your job well and doing something that demonstrates exceptional performance. If you’re an engineer and your job is to deliver features, releasing a feature isn’t, by itself, evidence that you’re exceeding expectations. That’s what’s expected of you. Consistently falling short of that would instead be a sign that you’re off track.

What matters is what happened beyond the expected outcome. Perhaps you navigated unusual complexity, prevented a serious problem, helped others become more effective, or had an impact beyond your immediate scope.

Those are the things worth capturing when they happen. Keep a document and add an entry whenever something feels worth remembering: the date, a little context, your contribution, and, where possible, some evidence of the impact. Numbers are great when they exist, but a piece of feedback, an outcome, or a concrete example can be just as valuable.

If you haven’t kept a record so far this year, it’s not too late. Start now, and if your memory fails you, look at the traces your work has already left behind.

Go through your Slack history, or ask Claude to help you explore it. Look at your DMs with your manager. Browse the pull requests you’ve opened, especially the unexpected ones: if you’re a frontend engineer, why were you working on the backend codebase? Look at incidents, documents, project channels, and feedback from colleagues.

Take the time to keep that record. Use the data you already have to fill in the gaps, and keep adding to it as things happen. When the time comes to talk about your performance, don’t rely on someone else to remember why your contribution mattered.

Give yourself the evidence to make the case for your own work.

Originally published as a LinkedIn post.