How to Write a Biography About Yourself

The hardest part of writing a biography about yourself is the discomfort of choosing what to claim. Most people swing too far in one of two directions: they undersell ("I help teams with their websites") or they oversell ("an award-winning expert at the forefront of"). Both are signs that the writer was uncomfortable.

There is a small trick that makes self-bios dramatically easier.

The third-person-first trick

Draft the biography in third person, even if you'll publish it in first person.

The reason: it is much harder to write "I am one of the most respected designers in the industry" than "Jane is one of the most respected designers in the industry." The third-person draft will reveal which lines you actually believe.

The workflow:

1. Imagine someone else is writing about you. A respectful, capable journalist who has talked to two of your clients.
2. Write the third-person draft. About 200 words.
3. Edit it until it sounds honest — cut anything that makes you wince to read.
4. Then flip to first person if the venue requires it.

The first-person version, written after a clean third-person draft, will be noticeably more confident and noticeably less inflated.

The first-person flip

Most third-person sentences flip cleanly:

• "Jane is a product designer focused on onboarding flows for B2B SaaS companies."
• "I'm a product designer focused on onboarding flows for B2B SaaS companies."

A few patterns to watch:

• Replace "Her work" → "My work"
• Replace "She has" → "I've" (the contraction reads warmer than "I have")
• Replace "She lives in" → "I live in"

Some third-person constructions don't flip well — long credibility-stacking sentences in particular. Break them into two shorter sentences when you convert.

What to claim and what not to

A few rules of thumb:

• Claim specifics, not adjectives. "Helped forty teams reduce churn" is a claim. "Talented designer" is an opinion you can't back up in writing.
• Claim what someone else has said. "Named one of the year's best by NPR" lets you cite the strongest version without saying it yourself.
• Claim what's verifiable. Anything with a number, a named company, a published work, a date, or a named publication can be claimed without discomfort.

What to leave out

• "Award-winning" without naming the award.
• "Bestselling" without naming the list.
• "Critically acclaimed" without naming the reviewer.
• "World-class," "leading," "renowned" — replace with a specific.
• Origin stories that are longer than two sentences.

A practical exercise

Write three sentences about yourself, alternating between specific facts and vague claims:

• Specific: "I taught second grade at P.S. 41 in Astoria for thirty-two years."
• Vague: "I am a dedicated and experienced educator."
• Specific: "Over those years I led the school's reading curriculum revision and mentored fifteen first-year teachers."

Notice which sentences sound confident and which sound like filler. The specific ones do all the work. The vague ones can be deleted.

Use the generator

Biography.co's Biography Generator will produce both first-person and third-person versions of your bio from the same set of facts. The default third-person draft is the place to start — even if first person is your final destination.