Keeping motivated when working on something long and complicated can be a real challenge. In order to do so, do you celebrate small wins?
In theory, celebrating small wins seems like an easy and effective way to do this. Celebrating makes you feel good, and a bunch of smaller victories will eventually turn in to a large one.
However, in practice there are many obstacles standing in the way of marking progress in this fashion.
First of all, it can feel very unnatural. Our society encourages us to make a big deal only when something is finished. But celebrating something partway done may feel premature. “Don’t count your chickens until they hatch,” as the saying goes.
Similarly, if you make the wins too small, celebrating can feel downright silly. To use a trivial example, if you are reading a thousand page book, finishing page one doesn’t seem like anything noteworthy. However, you can’t finish page one thousand without finishing page one first. Sometimes, even the smallest of accomplishments can be worth commemorating.
Another problem with our societal expectations comes from celebrating at all. Some of us are taught from an early age to be humble. If that is the case for you, denoting your own accomplishments can feel like boasting or bragging, which may be frowned upon.
Can you get past these issues? How might you go about structuring a project so that there are obvious points to mark your progress, and yes, even to celebrate? Do you make a point to think about your own victories, or to play cheerleader for other people to point out the progress they are making?
Related questions: How do you define success? What keeps you motivated? How do other people motivate you? How can you turn a loss into a win?