Small steps, big wins

SMALL STEPS, BIG WINS

Mario D’Couto

            Do you feel like sometimes your life is just a drag? That you have to force yourself to go through the motions and yet nothing seems to be working. Probably you may have heard that quote, “Tiny drops of water make a mighty ocean” and while most of us think that success is about achieving this grand goal or at least aspiring for one, we forget that ultimately success is based on the little things that we do each day that takes us one step closer to what we want. Before I go any further, I just want to say that the only person you have to compete with is yourself. If you can improve some aspect of yourself each day, you can then say that you were better today than yesterday. It’s never good to compare yourself with someone else. You can look at someone else and try to learn from them but comparing is something I would NEVER recommend. The reason is because when comparing ‘creeps in’, then there’s room for jealousy to come in, you would lose your sense of peace and so on.

            Each day when we set out at a particular task that we want to do and if we finish or accomplish it, it becomes for us a ‘small win’. Now mind you, this does not have to be something spectacular. Even a small thing like going to the grocery store, doing errands for the house, or there’s some personal work that you want to accomplish, all that is a ‘small win’. It may seem insignificant but here’s the deal, small wins are exactly what they sound like and are part of how keystone habits that create widespread changes. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favour another small win. Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.    

            To elaborate further, researchers and studies done in the past decade on the impacts of exercise on daily routine have shown that when people start habitually exercising, even as frequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher would put it this way, “Exercise spills over. There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”

            In their book, “How to perform under pressure”, Hendrei Weisinger and J.P. Pavliv speak about something similar in what they call, ‘micro – successes’. Micro – successes in very plain terms can be explained as achieving small goals or targets. Too often success is equated with achieving the big guns but success is made up of small tiny moments of smaller success. When this happens, every pursuit no matter how small it is, when achieved would make you feel proud. In this regard, it is worth keeping in mind the example of the stone cutter. When the stone cutter breaks a stone, it is not because of the 101^st blow that caused the stone to break but rather the 100 blows that preceded it that made the difference. If those 100 blows were not there, then it would be but obvious if there would be any chance of the stone to break. The magic behind every outstanding performance is found in the smallest of details.

            As noted before, small victories can include things like a productive conversation with your boss or a positive phone call with a client, a compliment from a colleague or friend, all of which can have the same impact. They stimulate the winner effect, causing the release of dopamine, which in turn builds confidence and because micro – success happens in our lives far more frequently than the big victories, they may be even more important. Acknowledge these micro – successes. Celebrate them. They will start to create positive feelings within you to fuel self – confidence.

            Here is a concrete example to put it into practice. Let’s say you wanted to lose 30 pounds, decide to lose just 5 pounds over say the next month. Set a goal to have a healthy snack at your desk every day or to walk 5 minutes a day. Doing this as a regular basis will eventually get you there. Another example could be maybe writing a song. Too often, we have this idea that we should come up with our best idea at the first shot. But who said so? Good writers and composers look out for cues everyday and make a note of it on a regular basis. Even if it is just a few lines, they are at it. Eventually, before you even know, they already have one chapter or a verse and a stanza ready. You can always add or subtract (edit) later.

            Even in the most mundane activities of our daily lives, we go through this although we tend to take it for granted like for instance, cleaning your house or your room, doing the errands for the house, taking time to be more responsible to your duties and so on. Micro success can therefore also be defined as how you perform rather than the outcome you achieve. It’s the effort that matters. A great interview or presentation IS the success – not getting the job does not negate your successful performance.

            According to Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, the micro – successes or small wins matter far more than people think. In her research, she also found that pressure leads to less creativity, after conducting an analysis of more than 12,000 entries. Also what she found was that it was not the recognition, incentives or interpersonal support that matters the most but rather the seemingly minor steps or ‘small wins’ that made the difference. Simply making progress had the most positive effect on employees’ emotions, perceptions and motivation. Some of the progress that people made seemed trivial on the outside, really incremental, even mundane, but it ended up having a big impact on pride, confidence, emotions and intrinsic motivation. It is these small wins that matter more because they are so much more likely to occur compared to the big breakthrough in this world. If we only waited for the big wins, we would be waiting a long time. And we would probably quit long before we saw anything tangible come to friction. What you need instead of big wins is simply the forward momentum that small wins bring.

          

        Comedian Jerry Seinfield lives by the process. Each January on a prominent wall in his apartment, he pins up a calendar that has the entire year on one page. On days, when he writes new material, no matter how little, he will draw a big red ‘X’ over that day. Over time a chain develops of crossed – off days. His goal is not to write brilliant comedy; his goal is to not break the chain. He says, “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break that chain.”

          

        This is the idea behind micro – successes. We need to mark the small wins, no matter how insignificant they might seem. For a team doing technical work in pharmaceutical trials, a small win can be sitting down at the end of the week to discuss the smaller and perhaps less significant progress members are making toward the client service team, it can mean getting through the week without any major hiccups. For a human resource team, it can mean getting a couple of key managers on board for training initiative. The micro – successes are at the heart of building confidence which is why Professor Amabile would say, “The more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run. Whether they are trying to solve a major scientific mystery or simply produce a high-quality product or service, everyday progress – even a small win – can make all the difference in how they feel and perform.”

            If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. However identifying keystone habits is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. This is what we mean by the ‘small wins’. They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures and they establish culture where change becomes contagious.

            

          \With that being said, it should also be noted that small wins do not combine in a neat, linear, serial form, with each step being a demonstrable step closer to some predetermined goal. More common is the circumstance where small wins are scattered, like miniature, experiments that test implicit theories about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and barriers that were invisible before the situation was stirred up. This was what happened in the case of the Olympic Champion, Michael Phelps. When his coach, Bob Bowman, started working with him and his mother as the key stone habits of visualization and relaxation, neither Bowman nor Phelps had any idea of what they were doing. They were actually experimenting until they eventually figured it out it was best to concentrate on the tiny moments of success and build them into mental triggers. By working them into a routine, it slowly helped in building the sense of victory which was why Phelps became the man that he is known today.

       

     The compound effect could also be seen as another example when certain amount of money invested over time on a regular basis, no matter how small it is, begins to grow.

           

       To conclude with one last example, it was long held that losing weight meant altering your lifestyle and going to a gym regularly. This is a good approach. However, the problem with this approach is that many people, in their pursuit of losing weight, start of with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm but after a span of 2 to 3 weeks, the fire dies away and they are back to their original self. Thus, another approach was adopted where many obese people were asked to note down what they consumed and at what time. It was quite surprising to find that this method automatically spurred many people to change their lives around.

        It was hard at first. The participants forgot to carry their food journals or would snack and not note it. Slowly, however, people started recording their meals once a week and sometimes, more often. Many participants started keeping a daily food log. Eventually, it became a habit. The participants started looking at their entries and finding patterns they didn’t know existed. Some noticed they always seem to snack at about 10 a.m., so they began keeping an apple or banana on their desks for mid – morning munchies. Others started using their journals to plan future menus and when dinner rolled around, they ate the healthy meal they had written down rather than junk food from the fridge.

            The researchers hadn’t suggested any of the behaviours. They had simply asked everyone to write down what they ate once a week. But this keystone habit (food journaling) – created a structure that helped other habits to flourish. Six months into study, people who kept daily food records had lost twice as much weight as everyone else. This was what one of the participants said, “After a while, the journal got inside my head. I started thinking about meals differently. It gave me a system for thinking about food without becoming depressed.”

            Success begins with or comprises of small things. You take care of the small things, the bigger things will take care of itself. The whole is made up of its parts.  If it were not for the individual parts, you would not have the whole.