Keep an evidence file. Memory is not on your side.
For when: review season arrives and you can't remember what you did in February.
Tilen Višnjevec · Finance director, Copenhagen · In every review cycle I see the same thing. People remember the last two months in detail and the previous ten as a blur. Their self-assessment reads like a job description, because that is what memory produces when it has nothing specific to hold on to.
The people who get promoted on time are not the ones with the best memories. They are the ones who wrote things down as they happened. Some people call it a brag document. I call it an evidence file, because that is what it is for.
What goes in the file
Not tasks. Outcomes. The test is simple: what changed because you did this? “Prepared the monthly report” is a task. “Rebuilt the monthly report so it goes out two days earlier and the leadership team now uses it to set priorities” is an outcome.
For each entry, write four things. What you did, in one line. What changed, with a number if there is one. Who saw it or benefited from it. And the date. That last one matters because the room cares whether you have been doing this consistently or had one good quarter.
Also record the hard things
Keep the moments that went wrong and what you did next. A failed project you recovered, a conflict you resolved, a piece of feedback you acted on. These answer the risk question in the promotion room better than any success does, because they show what happens when things don't go to plan.
The habit
Friday, ten minutes, before you close the laptop. One or two lines. If nothing happened that week, write that; a long run of empty weeks is useful information too. The whole year's file should fit on two pages. The one-pager for your manager is a selection from it.
I keep mine in a plain spreadsheet. The format does not matter. What matters is that in October you can open it and see February.
What to do this week
Make the file. A spreadsheet or a note with four columns: did, changed, who saw, when.
Backfill the last three months. Use your sent email and your calendar. It takes an hour and you will find things you had forgotten.
Set the Friday reminder. Ten minutes. The habit is worth more than the format.
One entry was a short thank-you from a stakeholder in another team, for fixing a problem nobody owned. A year later, it was the line my manager quoted when my case was made.
The case you make in October is written in the ten minutes you spend every Friday.