Admittedly, when determining the topic I wanted to write about for this blog post, I really struggled to identify one that inspired me and sparked my interest. After reading a variety of publications, searching recent news, and reflecting on recent experiences and campaigns across multiple days, I was still drawing a blank. Given that I’d spent what felt like ages trying to come up with a blog topic, I was being critical of my time spent and starting to get frustrated.
Then I came across this article in the New York Times: The Power of Low-Stakes Productivity. The article shares how most individuals have warped senses of productivity and how our perceptions of productivity and the amount we are expected to accomplish has been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We see our friends and families mastering the art of sourdough, reading stacks of books, completing home projects or learning a new skill, and may begin to wonder why we haven’t accomplished more with our abundance of free time. Instead of criticizing our lack of productivity or implementing self-care rituals to cope (though, I’m certainly not against those), shift your focus to small wins. Believe it or not, it will encourage productivity.
This advice reminded me of something my friend often reminds me of, originally said by Desmond Tutu, “There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”
This isn’t novel advice, but it is impactful. With any large project or lofty goal, it’s important to break it down into actionable and achievable steps. But what we’re often missing is the celebration of the completion of these steps.
Teresa Amabile, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, recommends celebrating small wins daily. Professor Amabile noted the research she and her co-author, Steven Kramer, conducted inside companies revealed “that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress — even small wins.”
Celebrating small wins creates forward momentum. When you take the time to celebrate an accomplishment, even a small one, it encourages you to complete another, and another, ultimately leading you to accomplish a much larger goal.
Another reason to honor small victories, according to Professor Amabile, is that “it helps us to work through difficulties and find weak areas that we need to work on.” Acknowledging small wins, such as addressing a handful of emails or making progress on a blog post, can help you maintain positivity even on days you’re ready to criticize how little you got done.
As you prepare to celebrate your own small wins consider the following:
- Keep a “done list” to track how much you’ve completed.
- Don’t look too hard for accomplishments; it can be as simple as reading a few pages of a book you’ve been meaning to read, but remember, if you can’t find any wins in a day, you’re probably not going small enough.
- Apply this approach beyond your professional life.
As we all work through these uncertain times and look for ways to adjust to the new normal, it’s important to test out new methods to encourage productivity, not only for ourselves, but across our teams. In our very deadline-driven and fast-paced industry, we often look right past our daily accomplishments. Stop and appreciate the small wins for more positivity and productivity.