What would you put on your CV if you didn’t have to impress a stranger?

Introducing the Quiet CV: A way to reclaim your inner value.

A curriculum vitae—or CV—is a beautiful concept. In Latin, it means “the course of your life.”

But when someone asks for your CV or resume today, they’re not really asking about your life’s course. They’re asking if you can do a job. And so, a document once meant to trace the course of a life is now a loud list of achievements, written in awkward, corporatespeak, designed to prove your worth to someone else.

Get the Quiet CV workbook here - free for personal use.

That’s fine when we use a cv as a tool to get a job. But for so many of us, myself included, our careers, bank accounts, and yes—our CVs—become one way we measure our own internal value.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, because your career and your finances do matter—and they’re also easy to measure.

You can count, to decimal places, exactly how much money you have. You can measure, to the millimeter, how large your house is. You can get degrees, qualifications, and titles. But you can’t measure fulfillment, you can’t count happiness, and you can’t quantify having a life that has meaning even if you lost all your possessions and titles tomorrow.

At the end of life, very few people wish they had a fancier car or a bigger title at work. Almost everyone wishes they had more time doing things they love, with the people they love.

A month ago, I applied for many jobs, and I didn’t hear back from any of them.

Feeling numb and empty after changing my CV for what felt like the 100th time, I left the cafe late and walked outside into one of those sunsets that take your breath away. The sky was a mix of red and gold, and I realized that people had looked at sunsets like these for thousands of years, and would do so for thousands more, and that the condensed lines on a digital document said nothing about what was beautiful or true about my own experience. My tragedy was not that strangers were rejecting me, but that I had begun to measure my own value by a bunch of bullet points.

So I redid my CV. But this one had nothing about my job titles or time at university. I didn’t do it for anyone else. I wrote about how my life brings value to the world beyond my work, and how the people I love bring value to me, regardless of their job title. And instead of writing about success and implying how great I was, I wrote about a time in high school when I intentionally lost, for the right reasons. My friend wanted to perform a kung fu dance to a Chinese pop song at our school’s talent contest. In our rural Virginia high school, I knew we’d be made fun of, but I cared more about supporting my friend than trying to be ‘cool’.

I had never really thought of that moment much, or been proud of it, because it hurt to be mocked. But reframing it, I realized it actually displayed bravery and loyalty, and independence. And while I can’t put ‘supported a friend even though they called me a loser’ on my CV, it says more about the person I try to be than most of what’s on there.

So I’ll ask you:

What would you include in our CV if you didn’t have to impress anyone?

Last year that close friend took his own life and it hit me that it was touching and sad and weird that in a spreadsheet somewhere his “value” was so high, because he made six figures, but in the end that didn’t matter and that, in a much deeper sense, his own true value was infinite to me. And though his employer bought his time for $75 an hour, or whatever it was, for years and years, I can’t buy a single hour with him again, even if I had all the money in the world.

I’m still friends with him on LinkedIn and I get sick thinking of the ‘congratulate ___ for six years at ___’ automated emails I’ll inevitably receive.

Automated emails like that, which frequently ask me to add people I’ll never meet to my “professional network” often make me wonder how many of us are quietly struggling to find the security we thought hard work would achieve.

Sometimes, it feels like an entire generation of once-creative, fun-loving children—who were punished for not being able to sit still—are now adults watching housing surge out of reach, wondering why doing what they were told didn't work out.

And even writing this again, remembering that moment and my friend, I shed tears thinking about how sad it all is.

But although the sadness may be deep, I am also determined not to let it define my path forward.

Now is probably about the time where a cynic is going to say, “Well Alex, it’s great to be a kind person or have self worth, but your employer doesn’t need to know all these things about you, and frankly they’re not relevant to the job you are doing.”

And this is the point where I say “I totally agree! Many things that make life matter might not be relevant to your job, and so it’s pretty strange that so many of us never take the time to write them down and appreciate how rich and important our lives are beyond our work. That’s exactly why doing this is so important.”

I’m not trying to delegitimize work, or pretend skills and credentials don’t matter, or to imply that none of us love our jobs. It’s beautiful to have a career that inspires you, and it’s even more honorable to work a job you don’t love to build a better life. This exercise is simply a reminder—for ourselves—that we are each, individually, so much more than a job, than a career history, than words on a CV.

Because sometimes we forget that.

And while most of us have lots of experience writing down our value to companies, so many of us never write down our value to ourselves, our family, or our community.

Many members of society aren’t respected or valued unless (or even if) they have an impressive CV. Hard work is itself a survival mechanism in a society that doesn’t value you. Ironically, your inner worth matters most when your outer worth is valued least. And still, a gap on your resume—or the ‘wrong’ school—can shut a door, no matter your talent or willingness to work hard.

So there it is. That’s the story, and maybe a writing exercise you can do yourself. I like to call it a ‘quiet cv’ because I felt the normal resume/CV forces you to loudly trumpet your accomplishments and experience to look valuable for others. And I wanted this to be the opposite, a way of quietly valuing yourself and the moments and meaning that matters in our own lives.

In my own life, I realized I spent more time wondering if others would value me, than writing about my values, and valuing myself.

If this resonates with you, I hope you’ll try it as a writing exercise.

To help, I created a printable/downloadable workbook. It’s payment optional for individuals but you can donate if you want—more details on the product page. It includes a modified sample version of my own quiet CV, and some tips / tools to write your own.

You can get it here and make your own Quiet CV!

I hope you’ll consider trying it and share it with your friends. But really, all you need is a piece of paper and the ability to look at your own story with a kind heart.

If you do this exercise, please write about your experience!

And if you’d like to do a zoom call talking about and sharing our own quiet CVs let me know in the comments! I’d love to see what everyone comes up with.

✨ Poetry Culture is quietly expanding. We’re about to launch new creative tools and resources for subscribers ($50/yr) and founding ($99/yr) members. I’m also handwriting thank you notes to everyone who joins a paid tier. I hope you’ll consider joining us on this journey! ✨ More on that in future posts <3

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Poetry Culture explores ways to live a more creative and meaningful life. Poetry Culture was founded by Alexander Webb, a freelance writer for the New York Times and National Geographic. Alexander is also the founder of indie band Lonely Singles.