How do I keep track of my achievements for my performance review?

How do you keep track of what you achieved, so that when your performance review comes round you are not reconstructing the year from your sent folder the night before?

Why it matters more than you think

I sat in calibration rooms at UBS on the reward side. In calibration, your line manager forms a view of your year. Then they argue for it against other managers making the case for their own people.

The budget matters. So does how well your manager makes the case. Inside a corporate, your value is a case somebody else makes for you, and your rating and bonus depend in part on how well they make it.

If your manager cannot say what you do in one sentence, they cannot win that argument. Their willingness to fight will not change it. The account they carry into that room is the part you can control.

Memory is a poor witness

By the time you need the evidence, the detail has gone: the number, the deadline, the problem you fixed. So each month, write down the actions you took and the business outcome they led to, while it is fresh.

SOAR is a simple shape for it:

• S, Situation: what was going on.
• O, Outcome needed: what had to change.
• A, What I did: your part, not the team's.
• R, Result: what you delivered, with a number if you have one.

One example written like that is worth more in calibration than a page of "strong performer, highly capable".

The habit

1. Put ten minutes in your diary on the same day every month.
2. Write one or two SOAR examples from that month, and one line on who came to you, and for what.
3. Six weeks before your review, pull the year together into three to five examples and give them to your manager in writing. Make their argument easy.

The same examples become your interview stories if your next move is outside, and your offer evidence if you go solo.

Your next step

The Optionality Vault does this with you. A monthly reminder, the SOAR questions, and a self-review draft built from your own record, ready six weeks before your review month. CHF 99 a year, with a full refund in the first 30 days.