When They Asked What I Did Last Year, I Didn't Have to Remember
A simple system that got me promoted every year since 2021.
January. Everyone scrambling. Scrolling Slack, hoping something jogs your memory. Opening PRs from March, trying to remember if that was actually important or just a random fix.
I opened a doc. Copied. Pasted into 15Five. 15 minutes, done.
Not because I’m more organized. I mean, I am. But that’s not the point. I just stopped trusting my memory years ago.
I've been doing this since 2021. Every year since then, promoted. Every single one. Not saying this guarantees anything. But something’s working. I did it wrong at first, though. I only tracked numbers. PRs merged, tickets closed, bugs fixed. Thought volume meant value. It doesn’t. Managers don’t care that you closed 42 tickets. They care about money. Did you make money or save money? That’s the whole game. Everything else is noise. And I agree with that.
So now my Notion doc looks like this:
TL;DR at the top. Semester highlights, impact only.
Then Projects split into Features and Fixes. Date, what changed, link to PR.
I also track Courses, Books, and stuff I did outside work, like blog posts.
And Investments in my own growth (actual dollars, because I take this seriously).
10 minutes a week. Feels pointless in the moment. Then January comes and everyone’s panicking, and you’re just... done.
The real shift was how I write the summaries.
I used to write “shipped invoicing feature.” Now I write “shipped invoicing automation that cut 3 hours of manual work per week from ops.”
First one is a task. Second one is dollars. Dollars get remembered in budget meetings.
If you can’t connect what you did to revenue or savings, keep asking why it mattered until you hit money. Usually takes two or three whys
In 2023, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s. Lot of things made sense after that.
I like systems. Like routine. Like doing the same thing every week the same way. Most people find that tedious. My brain finds it necessary.
I used to think this was a limitation. Now I see it differently. The thing that makes me “too rigid” is the same thing that means I never show up to a review empty-handed.
Three phases so far:
2021 to 2024, manual. One doc per semester, wrote everything by hand.
2024 to 2026, Google Sheets. Added charts, consolidated years.
Now, 2026 forward, AI-assisted. Exploring agents that document through conversation. Goal is to make this invisible.
Also started pulling tasks from company's OKRs directly. So I’m not just doing work. I’m doing work leadership already said matters. Then documenting that I did it.
10 minutes a week sounds like overhead.
Then January comes. Everyone’s reconstructing their year from memory. You open a doc, and you’re done.
Some people call that discipline. It’s not. It’s just writing things down because you won’t remember. Trust me.