How to document your impact with a Hype Doc

Has it ever happened to you that when you need to discuss your achievements with your manager or review what you’ve done, you forget some important details?

There’s no need to make an extra effort every time we need to remember our achievements. Instead of letting your work go unnoticed and forgotten, you can collect all your actions in a document called “Hype doc” or “Brag doc.”

What is a Hype doc?

It’s a live file where you document your achievements, contributions, and impact within your work, whether small or big, and most importantly, those you feel proud of. You can include awards, measurable achievements, goals reached, completed tasks, personal wins, projects you’ve participated in, cross-team collaborations, new knowledge or skills acquired, and certifications.

You can also document your contributions, the support you’ve provided to your team or others, any mentoring you’ve done, and feedback from colleagues, clients, or managers. In short, all the documentation related to your work is available, and you can refer to it as needed. This document is helpful in any field or career.

Having a hype document is helpful because it allows you to keep everything updated and documented. When you achieve something, you remember every detail, but over time, that information tends to fade. You’ll only remember part of your achievements when needed for a review, promotion, or resume.

What is it used for?

This document not only helps you visualize your personal growth, but it can also be key to a promotion or salary negotiation.

If you need to give and receive feedback from colleagues for performance reviews in your company, you can share your document with them. This will help your team and leaders recognize your work and improvements because it’s understandable if they can’t remember everything. You can also keep it as a private source when you need to share the information with others.

It also helps for a personal retrospective about what you’ve done, how your progress has been, in what areas you’ve worked on, where you would like to work more or less, which projects you feel most proud of, which ones turned out as expected, what you would do differently next time, etc.

It can also help you overcome impostor syndrome when you forget your achievements and feel like you haven’t done enough, which can affect your self-confidence. Often, the problem is not the lack of accomplishments; we simply forget them. This document also helps us understand whether we are moving in the right direction, whether we are satisfied with it, and whether we would like to make any changes. It’s for those moments where we lose perspective.

Lastly, it’s not only helpful to get a raise or a promotion, but it can also help you update your resume or prepare yourself for an interview.

How do you do it?

It’s as simple as writing it down in any file: a doc, Excel, Notion, a notepad, Figma, etc. It depends on your needs and the tools you have available. Depending on your goal, you can organize it in the way that suits you best.

It can include details such as the date, project duration, goal, actions, description, measurable outcome data, the team you worked with or impacted, what you’re proud of, and links to relevant files, images, feedback, or comments from colleagues. You can even organize it by categories based on your goals and separate it into sections.

It’s not necessary to include all those options; you can adjust it based on your needs. However, if you work in UX, always focus on your contributions to each project or initiative and how they impacted the business, users, or your personal growth.

It’s important to keep this file up to date. I recommend scheduling a recurring meeting and taking a few minutes to update it. The fresher the information, the easier it is to keep it updated. If updating it every two weeks works for you, do it. If you prefer every two months, that’s fine, too. The key is to find a rhythm that helps you remember what you’ve done.

You can create your own document, but if you need help, I share some Hype doc templates that you can use or take as a reference:

• Career Hype Doc de Cheechee Lin (Figma)

https://www.figma.com/community/file/970467107004283443/career-hype-doc

• Hype Doc Template de Soren Iverson (Figma)

https://www.figma.com/community/file/958738290099214909

• Sample Hype Doc de Aashni Shah

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YRA8j3HzwBkj2rBto774zWuKIj6GaoopZuwwtu6bUS0/edit?usp=sharing (spreadsheet)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o12BOKREVOXu_alnJgWygTTspmx56IPz8ljiuYNBEfw/edit?usp=sharing (Word)