Todd Henry wrote, “You should celebrate wins. In fact, I’m a firm believer in celebrating often.” Daily Creative: Find Your Inspiration to Spark Creative Energy and Fight Burnout.
I’ve heard this productivity advice before, but never really thought about it or implemented it.
Confession Time — I Don’t Often Celebrate My Wins
I’m not good at celebrating my wins, which means I’m writing this for me as much as I am for you.
I tend to focus my attention on getting a project done (like writing and publishing a new blog post), then immediately focus on the next project. I don’t take the time to stop and celebrate my win before moving on.
Why don’t we take time to celebrate when we’re done? Hedi Medina suggests one reason: “We live in a society where constantly achieving the next thing is revered. You’re always off, moving, pushing forward onto your next goal, your next win, the next thing on your list.”
With a culture that supports constant busyness, it’s easy for those of us interested in productivity to feel like we’re not being productive unless we’re working on a project.
We develop an accomplishment mindset, which is “a conditioned set of attitudes and beliefs that drives us to constantly strive to accomplish more. This mindset leads us to always want to fill our time with something—and feel guilty when we’re spending our time in a “nonoptimal” way.” How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times., by Chris Bailey.
The Benefits of Celebrating Our Wins
• Celebrating small wins helps to motivate us to accomplish our larger goals. Working on a long, big project can become demotivating over time when we don’t see results.
Break down a large project into smaller parts, and celebrate the completion of each part. “… celebrating small wins along the way is so important in giving us the motivation to push through difficulties and move forward.” How to Celebrate Small Wins to Achieve Big Goals, by Leon Ho.
• Celebrating wins helps us to have a positive attitude about ourselves by focusing on what we’ve accomplished instead of what we still lack.
According to Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, whether people have a positive or negative attitude in life is based on how they measure themselves. Learning How to Avoid THE GAP.
If they measure themselves by the ideal goals they haven’t yet accomplished, they “have a perpetual sense of failure.” The “horizon” of ideals isn’t reachable because it keeps moving. There are always more goals in the future, and they have a negative attitude about themselves.
If they measure themselves by where they’ve come from and what they’ve accomplished so far, “we always have a sense of progress” and that gives us a positive outlook.
Celebrating wins keeps us focused on what we’ve accomplished. By measuring ourselves by where we’ve come from and seeing how far we’ve moved, we have a sense of progress and that makes us feel positive about life.
• Celebrating wins forces us to take a break from working, which makes us even more creative and productive. To have focused attention that enables us to do our best work, we need breaks. “You can restore your ability to direct your attention if you give this activity a rest.” Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport.
How To Celebrate Our Wins
There are as many effective ways to celebrate our wins as there are people. We all have our list of ways to celebrate.
Perhaps this list will help you to define ways to celebrate that work for you:
• Do something nice for yourself. Go out to eat at a favorite restaurant, get a sundae at Dairy Queen, or buy something you want, but you’ve been putting off.
Reward yourself by indulging in your favorite guilty pleasure, such as surfing Instagram or Facebook. Play a favorite game, or take time to enjoy a favorite hobby. Get a massage.
• Focus on gratitude for your wins. Think about the skills you have and how things came together for you to have this win. Spend time thinking or writing in a journal about the things you’re grateful for that made this win possible.
• Thank other people who may have contributed to your win. Many times, wins are made possible by other people. Maybe someone sparked the initial idea for the project, gave you encouragement to start and complete it, or directly contributed in some manner.
• Tell someone else about your win. It can amplify your sense of celebration by sharing your win with someone else who can celebrate with you.
I have bi-weekly FaceTime support calls with a fellow blog writer. In addition to talking about the struggles and challenges we face, we also share our wins. Having this section on our worksheet forces me to think about what I’ve accomplished in the past two weeks. I look forward to sharing my wins with him and hearing about his wins.
Let’s Get Better About Celebrating Our Wins
Celebrating our wins helps to:
- Motivate us to keep on working,
- Maintain a positive attitude in life, and
- Give us the breaks from work we need to restore ourselves and fuel our creative work.
I encourage you (and myself!) to make it a habit to celebrate your wins. Of course, our celebrations should feel legitimate and substantial. We likely don’t need to celebrate that we took the trash out today. On the other hand, when we complete a project like cleaning out an overflowing garage, that calls for a celebration.