How to Write an Accomplishment Journal 🏆
How to use journaling to help your career and your wellbeing
Hey there! A friend of mine changed jobs about three months ago. During this time, he onboarded successfully, got some initial wins under his belt, and built enough trust to work (already) on a fairly big project.
I was able to watch this closely — we chat every week — and one of the things he did right from the start was journaling. He keeps a simple accomplishment journal (aka brag book) that helps both with his work and his wellbeing.
I have long been a proponent of this, so this was the perfect chance to revisit this topic and write about it in the newsletter! I also shout-out to my friend Matt Van Itallie — he is the most knowledgeable person I know about this and a lot of my thinking has been inspired by past conversations with him.
So here is what we are covering today:
📖 What is an accomplishment journal — and what you should write in it.
🔄 What’s the workflow — how frequently you should write, and how.
🎯 Why you should write it — benefits across the board, for your career and for your mind.
🧩 Format and Templates — exploring Matt’s “Logic Model”, with examples.
🥇 The Hierarchy of Outcomes — sorting out what matters from what doesn’t.
Let’s dive in!
📖 What is an accomplishment journal
An accomplishment journal is a way of keeping track of the meaningful things you do at work.
I believe the name is a bit misleading, because an accomplishment journal shouldn’t be only about accomplishments.
There is a lot of stuff that is valuable to write down, for various reasons. I believe you should journal about three major things:
❤️ Praise — write down any meaningful praise you receive. Meaningful here means specific praise for something you did, rather than a generic pat on the shoulder.
🏆 Stories with good outcomes— things that you did or stories you were involved in that led to a positive outcome for the team, for you, and/or for the company.
📚 Stories with good learning — you can (and should) write down even stuff that didn’t go well, as long as you learned something from it. Lessons learned are powerful and useful in many contexts. Also, be suspicious of bad outcomes from which you can’t find some learning. There is almost always something you can take away even from the worst situations — if you keep a journal, you will get more sensitive to this.
Now, I know what you are thinking: nobody ain't got time for that!
So what does the workflow look like? How can you keep track of those things without overwhelming yourself?
🔄 What’s the workflow
I believe that for anything that you do regularly, you should aim to make it a habit.
What is a habit? There are entire books written on the subject, but to keep it simple, to me a habit is something you do regularly that doesn't require effort because you have become used to doing it. It has become part of your daily or weekly flow.
To turn anything into a habit, here is what I do:
🤏 Start small
My bandwidth for anything new is extremely limited, so there is no chance I can start a new ambitious thing on a regular basis and be successful with it.
Conversely, if I start with the bare minimum, there is a chance the habit will stick and I will be even able to grow the scope over time.
That’s land and expand 101!
🗓️ Put on the calendar
I use the calendar for everything and I time-box every task.
There are recurring tasks/events, but also I do a high-level planning every Monday, and a more lightweight one—like a personal standup—at the start of each day.
Then, during the day, I just trust the calendar. Like, religiously. If something is in there, I just do it at that time.
This means that, for me, the most reliable way to start doing something — like journaling — is to block e.g. a 15 mins slot at the same time every week.
✏️ Minimum Viable Journaling
Now, journaling for 15 minutes a week might look insignificant — instead it’s a perfect start and is already a big win over the status quo. And you can always do more once the habit has kicked in.
My advice is to jot down notes casually during the week—unfiltered & low quality—using any note-taking app you have both on mobile and desktop (even Apple Notes is perfect). Then, use a weekly slot to review the notes, put them in good writing/format, and add things that may be relevant.
More sparsely, i.e. monthly or quarterly, you can sit down and do an actual review of what happened over the period. This is crucial to schedule because one of the main uses of journaling is to aid awareness — so if you never stop to reflect, that’s just a waste!
These are general guidelines. Find the cadence that works for you, and don’t overdo it!
❓ I don’t have a lot to write about
By writing weekly, there will surely be slow weeks where you struggle to find something to write about.
As a rule of thumb, learnings are easier and more frequent to find than accomplishments, and that’s ok:
🗓️ Monthly accomplishments — aim to write down an actual accomplishment at least once a month (sitting down weekly!). If a month passes and you haven’t come up with anything, that’s kind of a red flag.
☀️ Weekly learnings — aim to find something you learned every week. It may seem hard at the beginning, but by doing this regularly you will naturally become more sensitive to it. You can find learnings in the most unexpected places.
🎯 Why
But why should you put yourself through all of this? Writing is painful — I know better. If you don’t know what you are doing this for, you will never stick with it.
I believe accomplishment journals have four main uses:
1) Improve your career 🪴
Accomplishment journals are incredibly useful for performance reviews. You can prepare a summary of your achievements and share it with your manager in advance when it’s review time.