Little things matter!

As I said yesterday the weather is rainy and since it is Sunday afternoon, it’s a good opportunity to write another blog post. So here I go.

Little things matter. At least to me, they do. Professionally as well as personally. And by little things I mean the everyday successes, many actively choose to overlook or at least not celebrate.

Many of us are striving for perfection. Maybe even more of us measure our successes by the amount of positive feedback an “accomplishment” gets. From others, of course. Some might even depend on these compliments, which makes them manipulable.

How would I know that? Check out my blog post about my own experience with compliments- and attention-seeking:

https://mykindofsuccess.net/kind-of-successful/

I personally need motivation to do my job or anything for that matter. If I am not motivated, it is really hard for me to even get started. I do for example have zero motivation for exercise. You might want to tell me now, that I should just start and then I will feel the motivation come. The problem is, I won’t. The idea of exercising does not excite me at all. And that excitement is, what I would need to get going. A vicious cycle.

The only good news is, IF something interests me or excites me, I do not need extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is motivation driven or provided by someone else. I am able to fuel myself with intrinsic motivation, motivation coming from myself.

I just need to know, why I am doing something. It needs to serve some kind of purpose for me. Exercise just does not do that. It should, I know that much.

However, I was able to motivate myself to lose the ~60 lb of weight. And I was able to do that, because I had started to go long walks (thanks to Sammy). And I managed to accomplish more and more steps per day. I acknowledged that accomplishment and got myself an Apple watch to celebrate and also to keep motivating me. And this way I built up the confidence and motivation, to keep going and ultimately started with WW to lose the weight.

Have I always been like that? No, not really. Only when I started to take ownership of my life and found something I loved doing, did I start to develop this skills. It probably started with some level of extrinsic motivation. I was good at doing something and someone told me.

When and how did this happen? You can read all about it here:

https://mykindofsuccess.net/hero-heroine-or-victim-to-me-its-a-choice/

It’s super valuable to have this skill. Many bosses are not good at providing feedback, period. And some bosses are focussing their feedback purely on the things that need improvement. As much as I love hearing that, it’s not always enough to fuel my motivation. Some leaders are trying and are providing compliments as well, but they would say something like “good job” or “well done” etc.. And for me personally, that is worse than not providing positive feedback at all.

In order for me to grow and develop, feedback needs to be detailed and specific. It does not matter, whether it’s developmental feedback or positive feedback (check out this LinkedIn article for my take on feedback https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/give-feedback-when-you-have-something-say-nannette-coerlin/ ).

The level of detail should be the same for both kinds of feedback. But let’s be honest, it usually isn’t. One more reason to make sure, you are not relying on this for your own motivation.

So how can you motivate yourself? This is where the “little things” become relevant, for me. See, what I am doing is usually not rocket-science. That’s not to say it’s always easy or simple. But let’s face it, I have not invented the Internet (I wish) and I also have not detected a cure for cancer (I wish that even more).

Thankfully, I did have some huge projects throughout my career. And with huge I mean things like major program launches and the likes. And yes, those are SUPER motivating, especially as they were successful. But they do not happen every week. And in order to earn the “right” to be tasked with these major projects, you need to get the, you guessed it, “little things” right as well.

Those little things, if you got them right, should motivate you to keep going. They will give you the confidence you will need, should a huge project come your way. Unfortunately, if you are just doing these little things, but never pause to celebrate them, this is not going to happen. You will not feel accomplished and satisfied. And unfortunately, you will give others, including your boss, the same feeling. As if you did nothing that mattered or had an impact. And that is far from being true, isn’t it?

There is a saying, that is always on my mind, when it comes to this topic:

“You can’t light a fire, that is not burning in yourself”

Unknown

If you are not believing, that the “little things” you are doing daily matter and are accomplishments, why would anyone else? Right, they won’t! And that is why many of those that don’t believe in little things, struggle with “self-marketing” as well. They might even burn themselves out while chasing the “big successes”, that might never come, because they have not proven themselves with the little things. At least not visibly. Another vicious cycle.

How do you celebrate the little things? First of all, you have to learn to recognize them. If it does not come naturally to you, you need to make an effort to look out for the small steps you successfully took. And then allow yourself to be satisfied with yourself. Without anyone else telling you, you are. Set small goals and pause when you accomplish them, to reflect and yes, to celebrate. It was a little bit of a bigger step? Reward yourself (don’t use food, that can backfire badly, trust me)!

Another great way of learning to do this, is looking for the small successes of others. And celebrate those. Especially if you are a people leader. Learn from their small successes to recognize yours as well. And don’t forget to give detailed feedback to these small successes (instead of “good job”).

Once you have learned to recognize your small every day successes, you will hopefully feel much more accomplished after a “normal” working week that would otherwise not have been super exciting. You got things done? Well then you ARE accomplishing something, aren’t you? Good for you for recognizing that now. How about sharing it next?

If you are constantly inventing something, innovating your job and also curing cancer, no need to continue reading. Your boss / leader will know how awesome you are (hopefully).

If you, like us others, are not doing that at least not daily or weekly, you might still want for your boss to know you are getting things done. The little things, but nonetheless in high quality and maybe even fast. Let him know!

Of course you do not want to send an email after every task you completed. But it’s definitely worth to give an update in form of a summary of your weekly accomplishments, ideas you thought of and implemented or support you provided to help others and what that led to. You do not have to celebrate yourself, just provide an update and if your boss is a leader, they will celebrate you in return.

Most importantly, these positive summaries will add up and form a picture of a bigger success. For yourself and for your boss or leader. Consistent delivery. Even over delivery, as I am sure, some of your “little things” might be bigger than you might be able to see yourself.

Even the best leaders are not always seeing, what you are doing. And I am sure this is especially true in the current virtual world of our Covid-19 pandemic. Not only are we not physically together when we used to be. We are also distracted by our own little problems and concerns. And we need these little successes even more.

If you strike the right balance, your success summaries will be very welcomed. I, as a people leader, encourage my team member to provide these to me. I might see a lot of these and if I do, I am doing my best to celebrate them in the level of detail they deserve. But I might be missing some, that will help me understand where my team is doing great and allow me to focus my support on areas that are not going as well.

I will not get involved in things that are going well, since I do not want to micro manage. I will be able to provide guidance on the areas that might fall too short or need a little bit fuel (motivation) from me.

You would love to learn a new language, lose weight or run a marathon? All of these big accomplishments start with a first step. And trust me, you will lose interest, if you do not celebrate every accomplishment on the way to the big success. You can only run a half marathon yet, no need to celebrate?How far have you been able to run before you got started? Exactly.

I celebrated every pound I lost. And that helped me sustain the weeks when there was no loss or even a small gain. Those setbacks are definitely going to happen. If you never celebrated the “little things”, you will definitely regret the small setbacks and those will then weigh even heavier. As you won’t have anything in your emotional account to balance them out with.

I have begun to write a daily blog during the current Covid-19 crisis. You can find it here, if you are interested https://mykindofsuccess.net/category/social-distancing-diary/ .

In all honesty, I am not getting a lot of feedback or comments on these posts. If I would take my fuel purely from the outside, I would have probably stopped on Day 5 or 6 or so. However, I am enjoying writing them and I feel accomplished every night, when I completed one. It does help, that I can see in the statistics, that some people seem to be reading them regularly and are coming back for more. But the motivation comes from myself and the fact, that these are all small steps towards my goal of writing a book. And I sure am celebrating every one of these small steps. You should too!

As always, please let me know your thoughts in the comments and share your own strategie celebrating the “little things”.