As we near the end of the year, every employees’ favourite time rolls around.

No, not the holidays. I’m talking about performance reviews.

Time to reflect on the past few months and talk about our accomplishments.

What did you achieve this past quarter?

What are you most proud of?

How did you contribute to the business objectives?

For many people, performance reviews can be a source of stress and anxiety for a few reasons.

1. You can’t remember all the things you’ve accomplished
2. You have imposter syndrome and feel like you’ve underachieved
3. It can determine whether you get a raise or promotion

But you are the only person that has complete insight into the work that you’ve done.

To easily communicate your wins during your performance review, designers should get into the habit of keeping a hype doc.

What is a hype doc?

A hype document or “hype doc” is a living document of projects that you’ve worked on throughout the year.

The purpose of a hype doc is to document your work and outcomes so that you’re not left scrambling through old files trying to remember what you worked on for your next performance review.

A hype doc should include a few things:

1. What was the initiative / project?
2. When did you work on it?
3. How long did it last?
4. Who did you work with?
5. What was the business objective / goal?
6. What was the outcome?
7. How did you measure success?

With a hype doc, you’ll be able to track all your projects throughout the year and easily reference this document when it’s time to talk about your achievements.

Why should you keep a hype doc?

During the year, designers often work on and are constantly in the depths of multiple projects.

By writing down your projects and the outcomes, you’ll be able to easily talk about your contributions and how you helped your team meet their business goals.

Performance reviews are conducted for management to see how their team is doing. Usually done a couple of times a year, the organization can keep an eye out for employees that perform at an exceptionally high level as well as others that aren’t meeting expectations.

Being able to connect your outcomes to business objectives will help your manager build a case for your next raise or promotion.

Also, hype docs aren’t limited to just tracking projects.

You can include:

• conferences you’ve attended,
• talks you’ve given,
• blog posts you’ve written,
• workshops you’ve hosted, or
• any activity related to your professional career that you are proud of.

By including extracurriculars into your performance review, you’re showing your manager that you go the extra mile and are capable of leadership within your domain.

How do you set up a hype doc?

You can choose to set up your hype doc in any documentation format you’re most comfortable with.

Some options include Google Sheets, Notion, Figma, or Dropbox Paper.

Templates

Once you’ve chosen your format, simply create a table with columns including:

1. Title — A brief title about the project or initiative
2. Date and duration — when did you work on this project and how long did it last?
3. Stakeholders involved — who did you work with?
4. Business objective — mention any OKRs or KPIs set by the business
5. Outcomes — what were the user outcomes and how did you measure success?
6. Links — to any relevant files or documentation

By organizing your hype doc this way, it’s easily scannable and includes the key details of each project that you would want to talk about during your performance review.

Focus on your personal contribution to each project and how your work impacted the business and its users.

It’s called a hype doc, so hype yourself up!

Final thoughts

A lot can happen within a year.

Sometimes, I forget that I even worked on some projects.

But since I’ve tracked them in my hype doc, I don’t have to worry about remembering everything when the time comes.

Performance reviews shouldn’t be stressful. They should be a time for reflection and growth.

A hype doc is something that should grow alongside you in your career.

Update it constantly and beat imposter syndrome.

Prove to yourself that you are a great designer as your accomplishments, big or small, will help you grow and get to where you want to be.