What Is a Brag Book? How to Track Your Wins at Work (Free Template)

Forget the burn book. Start your Brag Book.

A brag book is a running record of your wins at work: your results, your numbers, and every kind word anyone has said about you. It's the only book where the gossip is about how good you are.

It sounds simple, and it is. It's also the thing that helped take me from a performance improvement plan to an offer with a 64% raise. I wrote that whole story here.

Why you need one (even if you're doing great)

Here's what most talented women don't want to hear: the people deciding your next step are not keeping track of your wins for you. They're busy. They remember the last thing that went wrong, and whatever someone said about you in a meeting you weren't in.

What gets said about you when you're not in the room is decided by your Creator Field, the energetic blueprint your career is reflecting back to you. Your Brag Book is where you start writing that version yourself, on purpose, with receipts.

It helps with:

• Performance reviews. You walk in with a year of proof instead of trying to remember March.
• Promotions and raises. You have the numbers to back the ask.
• Job searches. Your resume and interview stories are already written.
• Your own self-image. On the hard weeks, you can read proof of who you are.

What counts as a win

More than you think. There's no such thing as a small win. Any money coming in, any kind word, in every kind of work.

• A project shipped, a deadline beaten, a problem solved
• A number that moved: revenue, savings, time saved, quota, retention
• A client, customer or patient who said thank you
• A teammate you helped get unstuck
• A process you made faster or easier
• Something you learned that nobody asked you to learn

Corporate, business owner, teacher, server or caregiver: your wins count.

What to write down every week

Once a week, log each win with:

1. The win. What happened, in one line.
2. The number. How much, how many, how fast, compared to what.
3. Who noticed. Your manager, a client, leadership, a peer.
4. The skill it proves. Leadership, problem-solving, client trust, strategy.

Then keep a "receipts" section: screenshot every kind message. The Slack thank-you, the client email, the "great job today." Future you will need them.

Weekly is the secret. Once a year, review season panics you and you forget half of it. Once a week takes ten minutes and nothing gets lost.

Turn it into a wins email

A Brag Book does its best work when someone else reads it. Once a quarter, I turn mine into a short wins email: a recap of what I delivered, with numbers, and one clear ask. It might be a promotion conversation, a raise, a stretch project or a seat at a meeting.

One email, one ask. When I did this, my manager forwarded it to leadership.

The energetic half

Writing your wins down is the physical work. The energetic work is letting them change how you see yourself.

That's why my Brag Book includes career self-image ingredients: the beliefs and feelings of the woman who's already seen, valued and paid, and prompts for finding specific moments from your own life that prove them. An ingredient like "everything is always working out perfectly for me" lands differently when you have a page of receipts that says it's true.

Get the free Brag Book

I made the exact system I use into a free guide. Inside:

• How I used mine to go from a PIP to a 64% raise
• What counts as a win
• Weekly pages and a receipts section
• My copy-and-paste quarterly wins email (plus where to send it if you don't have a manager)
• Three career self-image ingredients
• Creator Field prompts to write her first

It's a fillable PDF and a Google Doc, and you get it instantly.

Get the Brag Book free →

Your wins deserve witnesses. ♡

— Megan