How to Track and Document Your Professional Legacy
If you follow any form of sports today, you realize that every game comes with a seemingly endless list of statistics associated with each player and team. Some statistics border on the ridiculous. We have quantified everything!
But what about your statistics? Do you have “receipts” for your successes, accomplishments and challenges as a professional?
A Highly Motivated Employee
Years ago, when I was managing a large sales and service team, I hired a younger employee into our Business Development Department. Jill Myers was a highly motivated, energetic and bright candidate. She was a former college athlete and had been a member of the dive team at the University of North Carolina.
As a competitive diver, Jill was schooled in the discipline of a very demanding sport.
A sport where fractions of a point can make the difference between a trip to the podium or back to the showers.
A sport where your individual efforts were clearly displayed with every dive. Your performance and reputation where on the line in every single performance.
Jill was doing a great job for us and soon it came time for her annual review.
We sat down together to discuss the previous 12 months. In her hands she held a large binder.
“What is that,” I asked?
“This is the ‘Me’ binder,” she said.
A Tool to Showcase Successes
She went on to explain, “this represents everything that I have accomplished in the past year. I have copies of congratulatory emails or notes you have sent me, notes from customers and fellow employees, and my results against the plans we laid out at the beginning of the year.”
I was impressed with her attention to detail which showed in the collection she created. Her conscientious nature was reflected in the care she took sharing with me how she reflected our company and department goals within her efforts.
Without her diligence, might some of her accomplishments been missed? Might some important details been missed if left to someone else to compile them?
Do you want to rely on someone else to capture and assess your contributions? No, you need to be your own statistician!
Today, as I coach many young professionals. I tell them, “Create a file of all your accomplishments. Include the big things and the little things. As you grow throughout your career, these notes will become both a source of your professional ‘proof’ and a ‘reminder’ of the wonderful experiences you collected along your journey.
Plus, they come in very handy when interviewing for a new position or preparing for an annual review.”
Why don’t you create one of these for yourself and begin capturing all these wonderful experiences? There’s already a name for it, the Me Binder.
Mark DeBellis, October 2025