I gained more than a few unwanted pounds during the pandemic. My kryptonite is baking. I bake bread, my husband makes pies, and my son experimented with fake-out cakes (the latest was a cake that looked like a big dish of cereal). These homemade goodies were too good to pass up.
It wasn’t too long before I realized that the sweet treats were not doing me any favors, so I decided to start seriously counting calories and committing to 10,000 daily steps.
The first three weeks into this effort, my body stubbornly refused to lose any weight. In fact, I even gained a pound, and I was just about ready to give up. Depriving myself didn’t seem worth it if I wasn’t going to get any results. Fortunately, not too long after, the scale started showing a tiny bit of progress. Every week I get a little numerical reward for all of that hard work. I start each day, almost looking forward to the challenge.
So many work projects feel exactly like this (although we can struggle through the doldrums for longer than three weeks, sometimes months, maybe even years). New projects and new tasks and seem completely unrewarding at first. And then maybe you have a little win that prompts you to stick with it.
Perhaps one of the most important keys to success is recognizing and celebrating the little wins. These little milestones can give us the motivation to complete a project well.
Related: