Writing your own performance appraisal can be harder than writing a review of someone else. While you want to highlight your successes and prove to your management team that you are a valuable asset to the company, you don't want to have your appraisal seem insincere or overly self-confident. The key to a convincing performance appraisal is to find a balance that showcases your skills, your achievements and key business outcomes while also highlighting areas where you plan to improve going forward.

Keep track of your accomplishments throughout the year. Don't wait until it's time to write the review to think back on your performance. Every quarter, create a list of projects or tasks that showcase your skills and successes.

Detail project specifics so that even someone who doesn't know you will be able to assess your performance. Identify any roadblocks within a project and how you used your problem-solving skills to successfully complete the project. If your work resulted in cost savings to the company, highlight the amount. If your efforts brought about a quantifiable improvement in performance or output, note the percentage amount of the increase.

Phrase your review in an appropriate manner. Instead of writing 'I get along with everyone, and am often complimented on my personality," write "I pride myself on my teamwork skills and work hard to ensure that my relationships with coworkers remain positive." Highlighting not only what you have accomplished but what you have learned on the job is an appropriate way to show maturity and growth.

Touch on improvement areas. Making suggestions on areas where you feel you can improve shows that you believe in self-development. Growth areas can be simple, such as, "I'd like to take a class on organizational skills," or "I'm interested in assessing the efficiency of our reporting process, and plan to improve my spreadsheet skills."

Have a trusted coworker review your appraisal before you submit it to your manager. It's always beneficial to have someone else review your report for grammatical errors as well as areas where you might include more or less information.