The power of small wins

What makes a good day a good day? A compliment, a bonus, a pleasant meeting? Two Harvard researchers looked into this question through thousands of work diaries, and the answer is more modest, and more within your reach, than you might think: having made progress, even a little, on something that matters.

12,000 days under the microscope

Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and researcher Steven Kramer carried out a large-scale study. 238 people, spread across 26 teams in seven companies, filled out a daily questionnaire about their emotions, their motivation and the notable events of their day. In all, nearly 12,000 diary entries.

By comparing participants' best and worst days, they identified what they call the progress principle: of all the things that can boost emotions and motivation at work, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

A few figures from their article published in 2011 in the Harvard Business Review:

• Steps forward occurred on 76% of the days when people were in the best mood. Setbacks occurred on only 13% of those days.
• On days of progress, participants were more motivated by interest in the work itself. On days of setbacks, they felt more frustrated, sadder, and sometimes so unmotivated that they no longer felt like working at all.
• 28% of the events that had a minor impact on the project had a major impact on how people felt.

That last figure is the heart of the matter: small wins count for much more than we think. One participant, a programmer, simply writes that she figured out why something wasn't working, and that she felt relieved and happy because it was a small milestone for her.

What almost nobody knows

The researchers also surveyed 669 managers about what motivates people most at work. Only 35 of them, about 5%, ranked supporting progress first. Most of them actually ranked it last.

In other words, we massively underestimate the power of progress. And that's true for you too: you tend to wait for a big success before you feel good, when the small steps forward during the day are already doing that work, as long as you notice them.

Why keep track

Another line of research rounds out the picture. In 2016, Benjamin Harkin and his colleagues published a meta-analysis of 138 studies, covering nearly 20,000 participants, in Psychological Bulletin. They wanted to know whether tracking your progress really helps you reach your goals.

The answer: yes. Interventions that prompt people to track their progress improve goal attainment. And the effect was stronger when progress was physically recorded, in writing or in a tool, or shared with others.

So tracking your progress isn't paperwork: it's what makes your small wins visible, and therefore useful.

Putting the progress principle into practice

1. Break your projects into visible steps. A task that takes three weeks gives you no wins for three weeks. Broken into steps of an hour or a day, it gives you dozens.
2. Start the day with a doable step. You give yourself a first win before the unexpected starts piling up.
3. Write down your progress in the evening. Amabile and Kramer suggest a short list of end-of-day questions for managers, including one about which of the day's events counted as a small win or a breakthrough. Ask yourself the same question.
4. Look at how far you've come, not just what's left. Once a week, reread what you've accomplished.
5. Treat setbacks as information. They weigh heavily on your mood, and that's normal. Ask yourself what they're teaching you and what the next possible small step is.

With ForgeMe

Goals in ForgeMe break down into sub-goals, and every task you check off is a small win you can watch add up. Today's quests also offer you progress that's within easy reach, and the journal lets you answer one question each evening: “What was my small win today?”