🥳 Tiny Wins 101

Hey there! Welcome back to The Flow by Flocus. If you’re new around here, welcome! 👋  You can catch up on our previous editions right here.

This week: You’ve heard this productivity advice before: “Celebrate your tiny wins.” Today, we’re diving deeper into what that means, some real-life examples of tiny wins, and how to actually celebrate ‘em. Let’s dig in!

🤏 What’s a “Tiny” Win?

“Celebrate the tiny wins.”

You’ve undoubtedly heard this productivity advice before, even from us.

But rarely does anyone explain what a “tiny” win actually is, how it’s different from a big win, or why you should bother celebrating it at all.

So let us be the first, perhaps, to break it down for you!

• 🎁 We tend to celebrate outcomes rather than effort.

• 🥞 Big wins, like graduating, are rare — but tiny wins, like studying, stack up daily.

• 🕵 Noticing the tiny wins builds momentum and motivation, even when you feel like you’re not doing enough.

The main reason you should try to notice your small victories?

Recognizing tiny wins teaches your brain to link action with reward.

Which means you’ll get a small hit of happy chemicals every time you study, instead of waiting until graduation day to celebrate.

With this in mind, what are some more examples of tiny wins in other areas of life? Read on to find out!

🏅 Real-Life Examples of Tiny Wins

🎓 Work/School

• Studying or working for any length of time

• Making a better grade on an exam than you thought you would

• Getting positive or uplifting feedback from one of your mentors

🏡 Home

• Cleaning a small part of your kitchen (instead of the whole room)

• Eating a new food you’ve always wanted to try

• Gathering all your dirty laundry into one pile

🧖 Self-Care

• Listening to your body and resting when you’re tired or sick

• Learning something new from an article or video

• Spending quality time with a friend or loved one

Now that you know what “counts” as a tiny win, how do you actually go about celebrating them? Keep scrolling to find out!

🥳 5 Ways to (Actually) Celebrate Your Tiny Wins

🖼️ Reframe what counts as a “win”

Answered one email? Win.

Got out of bed? Win.

Texted back a friend you’ve been (accidentally) ignoring for, like, 2 weeks? Win.

Different days will bring different wins — so don’t be too hard on yourself, especially on low-energy days. Remember, these wins are called “tiny” for a reason!

🎖️ Swap your to-do list for a “done list”

Instead of writing down things you still have to do, write down stuff you’ve already done.

We call this planning in reverse.

It helps you see just how much work and effort you’ve already put in, which makes celebrating a lot easier.

💼 Know the difference between tasks and projects

That “one task” you’ve been meaning to do?

It might actually be a project with multiple steps and phases.

If you think about an entire project as “one task”, you’ve definitely breezed past a bunch of milestones that deserve to be celebrated.

🤳 Share your wins

Celebrating is a lot more fun with friends. Send a text, post a pic of your win on social media, or share a screenshot of a completed Pomodoro sesh in #pomo-battles in Flocus Discord.

You might be surprised at how uplifted you’ll feel from other people’s comments and reactions!

🥳 Make it fun

A tiny win deserves a tiny celebration. And it means you don’t have to spend a ton of time or money on something fancy.

Some of our favorite celebration cues:

• 🧁 A snack

• 🚶 A quick walk

• 🃏 A 5-minute game, like mahjong or solitaire

🪅 Flocus Picks

A curated list of things worth sharing.

• How to Stop Being So Hard on Yourself (YouTube Short) — This quick clip from Mel Robbins includes a dose of motivation, plus more thoughts on celebrating the small stuff

• uplifting lofi (playlist) — Just over an hour of fresh, upbeat tunes for your next extended break or chill sesh

• Brainzilla — Games for Your Brain (App) — Check out these free mentally stimulating games for all ages, including classics like sudoku, plus unique riddles and puzzles

✨ Flocus: Your Personal Productivity Dashboard

Productivity doesn’t have to feel like a grind. With Flocus, create a calm, motivating workspace with reorderable task lists, beautiful themes, and ambient worlds that help you celebrate progress — big or tiny.

Go to Flocus

Whenever you hear “celebrate your tiny wins” in the future, you’ll know exactly what that means and how to do it.

Try some of these tips this week, and let us know how it goes!

Until next Sunday,

Flocus Team