have you ever tried to weigh an ant if
you’re like most people you’re actually
doing it every single day we weigh ads
when we expect that our brand new
business idea will topple Amazon
overnight or here’s a good one when we
hope that a single week at the gym will
result in 10 pounds of weight loss or
when we commit to learning a new
language and then expect to be fluent
after a month we all do this
weighing ads we are all taking the
tiniest wins and accomplishments of our
lives and we were throwing them on these
huge scales expecting to see the needle
move we look ridiculous of course trying
to measure ounces of daily progress in
pounds is a recipe for despair but we
seem so stuck in this habit and we are
missing out we were missing out on
learning we’re missing out on succeeding
we’re giving up entirely thinking that
we are not good enough the news and
social media have played a part in this
we are constantly bombarded with stories
of investors and entrepreneurs going
from nothing to millionaires overnight
and we don’t like admitting to our slow
progress failures and worst of all our
insecurities who wants to talk about
those they make us feel frustrated
disappointed and you know what sometimes
I’ve been embarrassed it’s easier to
keep quiet or to fake it not realizing
that that’s what many others are doing
and then we compare our accomplishments
to each others and feel lousy and
insecure because we know that our
success story isn’t
all truth but the other guy oh now he’s
got it all figured out right he sets on
his Facebook page consequently these
seemingly large successes being
accomplished by others have programmed
our thoughts and desires to want and
expect the same kind of results in our
own lives we’ve started to measure our
progress on an oversized scale imagine
for a moment that this very stage is a
scale it’s big enough to a car right but
do you think you would register anything
at all if I put an ant on it what about
a thousand ants do you think it would
register anything then
okay what about a thousand ants jumping
up and down it’s unlikely that a scale
this size will register the ants at all
but that’s what we’re all doing we’re
achieving things in small nearly
invisible increments but then expect
them to register on the scale the size
of a TED stage and we feel like failures
when they don’t Karl Weick is an
organizational theorists he talks about
the importance of small wins
what are small wins small and wins don’t
seem to go together without some
conscious effort on our part but he says
that small ones have a transformational
power and that once a small one has been
accomplished forces are set in motion to
favor another small win and another
small win until the combination of these
small wins lead to larger and greater
accomplishments what does that actually
mean
it means that losing an ounce of weight
puts us on the path to losing a pound
and then two pounds and then who knows
maybe even a hundred pounds
it means that adding two new words to
our vocabulary in a new language does
put us on the road to fluency and it
means that selling a few books online
can set the foundation to become the
largest online retailer or to topple it
but the weight of these individual small
wins isn’t significant enough to be
detected on our oversized scales and
when we don’t see any changes we get
discouraged we think it’s us that we’re
not good enough then we give up real
progress is the combination of slow
small and steady steps repeat it over
and over again it doesn’t look like much
when it’s happening it’s more closely
related to our habitual behaviors than
to our achievements in her TED talk
Elizabeth Gilbert the author of Eat Pray
Love talks about her struggle with
publishing another book after her
massive success feeling that whatever
she published next wouldn’t be good
enough the way she found the inspiration
to keep publishing was by remembering
her journey as a writer her days of
working as a waitress and trying to get
to get published and how for six years
she kept getting rejection letters what
kept her going at the time was focusing
on what she loved the most
writing despite the results that she was
getting and that’s how she found her way
back to writing after her big success
she said your home is that thing to
which you can dedicate your energies
with such singular devotion that the
Gilbert focused on habitual behaviors
and smaller progress scales to help her
regain the inspiration and creativity
after a big success she focused on the
process
not the results and then there’s Martin
Pistorius the author of ghost boy now
his decision to use small scales to
measure his progress gave him a second
chance at life and made him the New York
Times bestselling author when he was a
child
Pistorius got a brain infection that
made him completely paralyzed for a
decade and eventually when he start to
regain his awareness he realized that he
was trapped inside a body that wouldn’t
respond to any of his commands so he
couldn’t let anybody know that his
awareness was back he could feel he
could understand in a BBC interview he
used his computer to say success is
strange in that it cultivates more
success once I had achieved something it
encouraged me to try even harder it
expanded my perception of what was
possible if I could do this then what
else could I do in my case when I was a
child I had a condition called selective
mutism it’s a severe social anxiety
disorder that impacts your ability to
speak in certain social settings like at
school or around people you don’t know
and I remember many many awkward
situations where I was asked questions
or I was expected to speak but words
wouldn’t come out of my mouth it doesn’t
matter how much I wanted to talk if my
parents were around I whispered in their
ears and they spoke for me and it’s
taken me years of taking small steps
trying failing and trying again to
become more comfortable in social
settings so today standing before you on
its head stage is an accomplishment
that’s the result of all those small
where in your life do you need to
focusing on progress helps us keep
moving forward doesn’t matter where we
are in our journey wins no matter how
big or small are just one more thing to
throw on the scale that’s sensitive
Hurra Business School professor Theresa
honourable talks about the importance of
detecting our small wins
she says that keeping a work diary helps
us to reflect on our days keep track of
all those small little achievements that
normally go unnoticed and use this
reflection as a tool to plan our next
step because seeing progress doesn’t
matter how small keeps us happy
motivated and productive but a thing is
most of us have hectic work schedules
and we don’t get a chance to reflect on
our day so keeping your work diary
forces us to sit down reflect on the
daily happenings and helps us to detect
and celebrate our small wins even on
those frustrating days that we don’t
think we got a lot done not only that it
also helps us to work through
difficulties and to find weak areas that
we need to work on but it’s too easy to
dismiss our small wins when we’re facing
setback in fact research shows that the
negative effect of setbacks is two to
three times stronger and more powerful
than the positive effect of progress so
even the smallest setbacks and negative
events can bring us down and focus our
energies and attentions on them so it’s
helpful to have a few people in our
lives whether they’re coaches close
friends or partners who can remind us of
our small wins when we can’t seem to
when I was younger my mother used to
tell me gum but a man has gum but a gum
but it is a Japanese phrase used as an
encouragement meaning to stick with it
or try your best she passed away six
years ago but today every time I feel
like I’m not making a lot of progress or
when I feel like I need the
encouragement to be brave or to keep
going I imagine her telling me gambits a
and that brings me back to focusing on
my habits and readjusting my progress
yeah working towards mastering something
is a never-ending loop because learning
is a never-ending process the process
starts with defining a vision building
habits and learning strategies this path
emphasizes practice effort patience and
concentration
it’s how one reaches their highest
potential so it doesn’t matter whether
you’re winning or losing or how fast how
slow you’re seeing results instead of
focusing on the outcome strive for
improvement and work to better your
craft this way every morning when you
wake up you know that you’re a better
version of yourself today than you were
yesterday in my work as an educator I’ve
noticed that an effective way to adopt
smaller scales to measure our progress
is by setting goals that lead to
consistent action because we all know
what goals without actions are called
right New Year’s resolutions their
wishes there are four steps to this
action-packed goal setting
step1 have a clear vision of what it is
exactly that you want to accomplish now
your vision doesn’t have to be something
big and complicated it gave me something
simple or personal like wanting to lose
weight wanting to learn a new language
wanting to build a successful business
whatever it may be be specific
but once you’ve set your vision don’t
focus on it knowing exactly what you
want will set your final destination but
then you want to bring the focus back to
where you are so that you can plan the
journey step 2 break down your big
vision into three to four smaller
achievable goals so that you can see the
individual components you need to work
on to get you closer to that vision for
weight loss for example you may want to
focus on your eating habits sleeping
habits meditating and exercising for
business and career growth you may want
to focus on your communication skills
your networking and keeping up to date
with the developments in your field step
3
focus each individual smaller goal on
the process of learning mastery and
improving now the improvements won’t
look like much when they’re happening so
keep it working work diary and look back
on your journey on a weekly or monthly
basis so that you can see how far you’ve
come and how much you’ve accomplished
and finally step 4 as good as it feels
to receive social acknowledgement don’t
announce your big and important goals to
anyone and everyone instead so like one
or two people who can act to remind you
of your small wins when you need the
encouragement and focus your goal talks
with them on the process of working hard
and making improvements why am I telling
you this
research shows that when we share our
big and important goals with other
people
as soon as we receive social
acknowledgement and social recognition
our brains tricked into thinking that
we’ve already accomplished that goal so
we become less likely and less motivated
to pursue those activities that get us
closer to achieving it let’s do a recap
step one have a clear vision
step two break down your vision into
three to four smaller achievable goals
step three
focus each goal on the process of
learning mastery and improving and
finally step four select one or two
people to act as your support you will
notice that once you get this four step
process right you will build the habits
that will automatically lead you to your
big vision without you having put the
focus on it at some point we’ve all
missed out on learning and succeeding
because we were too busy weighing ants
we’ve avoided opening doors of
opportunities because we thought we
weren’t good enough now imagine a world
where no potential is wasted where all
of us as individuals communities and
society work to become better versions
of ourselves
day after day I’ll leave you with the
same words of encouragement that my
mother used to say to me stick with it gambit a
you’re like most people you’re actually
doing it every single day we weigh ads
when we expect that our brand new
business idea will topple Amazon
overnight or here’s a good one when we
hope that a single week at the gym will
result in 10 pounds of weight loss or
when we commit to learning a new
language and then expect to be fluent
after a month we all do this
weighing ads we are all taking the
tiniest wins and accomplishments of our
lives and we were throwing them on these
huge scales expecting to see the needle
move we look ridiculous of course trying
to measure ounces of daily progress in
pounds is a recipe for despair but we
seem so stuck in this habit and we are
missing out we were missing out on
learning we’re missing out on succeeding
we’re giving up entirely thinking that
we are not good enough the news and
social media have played a part in this
we are constantly bombarded with stories
of investors and entrepreneurs going
from nothing to millionaires overnight
and we don’t like admitting to our slow
progress failures and worst of all our
insecurities who wants to talk about
those they make us feel frustrated
disappointed and you know what sometimes
I’ve been embarrassed it’s easier to
keep quiet or to fake it not realizing
that that’s what many others are doing
and then we compare our accomplishments
to each others and feel lousy and
insecure because we know that our
success story isn’t
all truth but the other guy oh now he’s
got it all figured out right he sets on
his Facebook page consequently these
seemingly large successes being
accomplished by others have programmed
our thoughts and desires to want and
expect the same kind of results in our
own lives we’ve started to measure our
progress on an oversized scale imagine
for a moment that this very stage is a
scale it’s big enough to a car right but
do you think you would register anything
at all if I put an ant on it what about
a thousand ants do you think it would
register anything then
okay what about a thousand ants jumping
up and down it’s unlikely that a scale
this size will register the ants at all
but that’s what we’re all doing we’re
achieving things in small nearly
invisible increments but then expect
them to register on the scale the size
of a TED stage and we feel like failures
when they don’t Karl Weick is an
organizational theorists he talks about
the importance of small wins
what are small wins small and wins don’t
seem to go together without some
conscious effort on our part but he says
that small ones have a transformational
power and that once a small one has been
accomplished forces are set in motion to
favor another small win and another
small win until the combination of these
small wins lead to larger and greater
accomplishments what does that actually
mean
it means that losing an ounce of weight
puts us on the path to losing a pound
and then two pounds and then who knows
maybe even a hundred pounds
it means that adding two new words to
our vocabulary in a new language does
put us on the road to fluency and it
means that selling a few books online
can set the foundation to become the
largest online retailer or to topple it
but the weight of these individual small
wins isn’t significant enough to be
detected on our oversized scales and
when we don’t see any changes we get
discouraged we think it’s us that we’re
not good enough then we give up real
progress is the combination of slow
small and steady steps repeat it over
and over again it doesn’t look like much
when it’s happening it’s more closely
related to our habitual behaviors than
to our achievements in her TED talk
Elizabeth Gilbert the author of Eat Pray
Love talks about her struggle with
publishing another book after her
massive success feeling that whatever
she published next wouldn’t be good
enough the way she found the inspiration
to keep publishing was by remembering
her journey as a writer her days of
working as a waitress and trying to get
to get published and how for six years
she kept getting rejection letters what
kept her going at the time was focusing
on what she loved the most
writing despite the results that she was
getting and that’s how she found her way
back to writing after her big success
she said your home is that thing to
which you can dedicate your energies
with such singular devotion that the
Gilbert focused on habitual behaviors
and smaller progress scales to help her
regain the inspiration and creativity
after a big success she focused on the
process
not the results and then there’s Martin
Pistorius the author of ghost boy now
his decision to use small scales to
measure his progress gave him a second
chance at life and made him the New York
Times bestselling author when he was a
child
Pistorius got a brain infection that
made him completely paralyzed for a
decade and eventually when he start to
regain his awareness he realized that he
was trapped inside a body that wouldn’t
respond to any of his commands so he
couldn’t let anybody know that his
awareness was back he could feel he
could understand in a BBC interview he
used his computer to say success is
strange in that it cultivates more
success once I had achieved something it
encouraged me to try even harder it
expanded my perception of what was
possible if I could do this then what
else could I do in my case when I was a
child I had a condition called selective
mutism it’s a severe social anxiety
disorder that impacts your ability to
speak in certain social settings like at
school or around people you don’t know
and I remember many many awkward
situations where I was asked questions
or I was expected to speak but words
wouldn’t come out of my mouth it doesn’t
matter how much I wanted to talk if my
parents were around I whispered in their
ears and they spoke for me and it’s
taken me years of taking small steps
trying failing and trying again to
become more comfortable in social
settings so today standing before you on
its head stage is an accomplishment
that’s the result of all those small
where in your life do you need to
focusing on progress helps us keep
moving forward doesn’t matter where we
are in our journey wins no matter how
big or small are just one more thing to
throw on the scale that’s sensitive
Hurra Business School professor Theresa
honourable talks about the importance of
detecting our small wins
she says that keeping a work diary helps
us to reflect on our days keep track of
all those small little achievements that
normally go unnoticed and use this
reflection as a tool to plan our next
step because seeing progress doesn’t
matter how small keeps us happy
motivated and productive but a thing is
most of us have hectic work schedules
and we don’t get a chance to reflect on
our day so keeping your work diary
forces us to sit down reflect on the
daily happenings and helps us to detect
and celebrate our small wins even on
those frustrating days that we don’t
think we got a lot done not only that it
also helps us to work through
difficulties and to find weak areas that
we need to work on but it’s too easy to
dismiss our small wins when we’re facing
setback in fact research shows that the
negative effect of setbacks is two to
three times stronger and more powerful
than the positive effect of progress so
even the smallest setbacks and negative
events can bring us down and focus our
energies and attentions on them so it’s
helpful to have a few people in our
lives whether they’re coaches close
friends or partners who can remind us of
our small wins when we can’t seem to
when I was younger my mother used to
tell me gum but a man has gum but a gum
but it is a Japanese phrase used as an
encouragement meaning to stick with it
or try your best she passed away six
years ago but today every time I feel
like I’m not making a lot of progress or
when I feel like I need the
encouragement to be brave or to keep
going I imagine her telling me gambits a
and that brings me back to focusing on
my habits and readjusting my progress
yeah working towards mastering something
is a never-ending loop because learning
is a never-ending process the process
starts with defining a vision building
habits and learning strategies this path
emphasizes practice effort patience and
concentration
it’s how one reaches their highest
potential so it doesn’t matter whether
you’re winning or losing or how fast how
slow you’re seeing results instead of
focusing on the outcome strive for
improvement and work to better your
craft this way every morning when you
wake up you know that you’re a better
version of yourself today than you were
yesterday in my work as an educator I’ve
noticed that an effective way to adopt
smaller scales to measure our progress
is by setting goals that lead to
consistent action because we all know
what goals without actions are called
right New Year’s resolutions their
wishes there are four steps to this
action-packed goal setting
step1 have a clear vision of what it is
exactly that you want to accomplish now
your vision doesn’t have to be something
big and complicated it gave me something
simple or personal like wanting to lose
weight wanting to learn a new language
wanting to build a successful business
whatever it may be be specific
but once you’ve set your vision don’t
focus on it knowing exactly what you
want will set your final destination but
then you want to bring the focus back to
where you are so that you can plan the
journey step 2 break down your big
vision into three to four smaller
achievable goals so that you can see the
individual components you need to work
on to get you closer to that vision for
weight loss for example you may want to
focus on your eating habits sleeping
habits meditating and exercising for
business and career growth you may want
to focus on your communication skills
your networking and keeping up to date
with the developments in your field step
3
focus each individual smaller goal on
the process of learning mastery and
improving now the improvements won’t
look like much when they’re happening so
keep it working work diary and look back
on your journey on a weekly or monthly
basis so that you can see how far you’ve
come and how much you’ve accomplished
and finally step 4 as good as it feels
to receive social acknowledgement don’t
announce your big and important goals to
anyone and everyone instead so like one
or two people who can act to remind you
of your small wins when you need the
encouragement and focus your goal talks
with them on the process of working hard
and making improvements why am I telling
you this
research shows that when we share our
big and important goals with other
people
as soon as we receive social
acknowledgement and social recognition
our brains tricked into thinking that
we’ve already accomplished that goal so
we become less likely and less motivated
to pursue those activities that get us
closer to achieving it let’s do a recap
step one have a clear vision
step two break down your vision into
three to four smaller achievable goals
step three
focus each goal on the process of
learning mastery and improving and
finally step four select one or two
people to act as your support you will
notice that once you get this four step
process right you will build the habits
that will automatically lead you to your
big vision without you having put the
focus on it at some point we’ve all
missed out on learning and succeeding
because we were too busy weighing ants
we’ve avoided opening doors of
opportunities because we thought we
weren’t good enough now imagine a world
where no potential is wasted where all
of us as individuals communities and
society work to become better versions
of ourselves
day after day I’ll leave you with the
same words of encouragement that my
mother used to say to me stick with it gambit a
Please follow and like us: