Every massive success starts as an accumulation of small wins. The wins compound to create a snowball effect over time to become long term success.
“If you want to build a big business, start a small business”, says Sahil Lavingia.
A successful newsletter starts with 1000 try fans. You won’t become a successful blogger on your 100th publication, but the daily or weekly publishing compounds in your favour.
Your first product won’t solve all your customer’s problems, but given enough time, you will make it better.
The first step puts you in a strong position to accelerate progress. But for your small wins to compound in your favour, you have to be consistent.
Jack Welch was right, “You can’t grow long-term if you can’t eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.”
The key to success lies in achieving many small wins instead of trying to reach one big accomplishment. This principle is called “chunking” and it can be used for anything that you are trying to do.
You might not see the progress at first, but focusing on your small wins will help you maintain focus throughout the process.
“Excelling at the small choices that compound over time perpetually leaves you in favorable circumstances, writes Farnam Street.
Big wins are not achieved in isolation. They are a series of small gains or wins that become long term success.
Small leaps over time will accumulate into huge leaps of success.
And it starts with one win at a time.
Long-term Success is a series of small wins: don’t underrate tiny victories
When we take on a large task, we often become overwhelmed and demotivated. This is likely because we feel like we have to make a huge change in order to get anywhere.
The opposite approach — small changes that lead to big results — is much more effective.
Small wins give us confidence, keep our momentum going, and help us build momentum for bigger goals ahead.
What separates high achievers from average people is their ability to break down any goal into a series of small wins. They’re able to break down the big picture into manageable day-to-day tasks or actions.
The power of small wins is a phenomenon in psychology where people who commit to a certain goal over a long period of time are more likely to succeed if they break down that goal with smaller, incremental steps.
Some people call this the “spider monkey effect” because it reminds them of a spider monkey climbing up a tree by reaching for one branch at a time.
For those that have been trying to lose weight or change careers, using this method can be effective.
It’s not as overwhelming as looking at the big picture and seeing only failure. Smaller goals become achievable, and your motivation is not lost as quickly as it would be with larger goals.
The small wins strategy is the best way to show your brain that change is happening. It’s a technique that can be applied to everything from weight loss, quitting smoking, and getting out of debt.
Breaking your larger goal down into smaller milestones can help you achieve them faster.
Here’s a simple process that can you can use:
- Pick a time frame: Create a timeline for your long-term goal: make you the steps toward accomplishing it are manageable, achievable and realistic.
- Don’t overwhelm yourself: break down larger tasks into smaller ones and set deadlines for the tiny actions — that way the task becomes more manageable.
- Keep track and measure: write down your progress, celebrate the small victories and do more of what gets you closer to the bigger goal.
Achieving major goals is difficult.
But certain small wins can help you stay motivated and on track.
When you are striving to be successful, it is easy to get lost in the long term. It can be draining to think about where you want to be in five years when right now the only thing you care about is making it through the day.
Successful people focus on short-term wins.
They know that long-term success is too big of a goal to tackle all at once, so they break it down into manageable tasks and work their way up.
“I’ve found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
Whether it’s focusing on your career, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, or building wealth, focusing on the big picture alone will get you nowhere.
Achieving long term success in any endeavour is the result of consistently doing the right things.
Achieving long-term success is hard. It can take so much time and energy, and it’s hard to measure long term progress.
But your short-term victories will add up in your favour: it’s how you keep the momentum going on a daily basis.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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