If you’re like most people, you probably don’t remember the last time you finished your check list and relaxed your way through the rest of the day. 

Welcome to the ‘Age of Productivity’ where you don’t get to finish one thing without having to figure out which of the next ten tasks most deserve your attention. It’s sick. We’re sick. 

We have forgotten that progress is fueled by tiny steps, not giant leaps. 

You don’t leap your way to the top of the mountain. You take one step at a time and hopefully you enjoy the hike. 

The Productivity Trap

All you have to do is expend endless effort and eventually you’ll get no reward. That’s a crap deal! Do the thing, then optimize, do the next step, finish the thing, feel vaguely behind, and finally you get to be overwhelmed. 

There are countless gurus telling us how to optimize, track habits, set bigger goals, and fix our lives - but they seem to have all forgotten that life is a thing to be enjoyed and those baby steps - those slow hiking steps up the mountain? They are part of the joy too. 

Where is the reward? Overwhelm is not what we should be optimizing for. 

The Truth About Dopamine Addiction

There are countless articles about dopamine addiction. It’s a real issue - especially when the sources of our dopamine hits are unhealthy, but what if we could get dopamine high from doing positive things? What if we could train our body and minds to be better because of the propensity for addiction? Spoiler alert: We can. 

The tech overlords have harnessed dopamine addiction to keep people scrolling on social media, looking at their phones, playing video games. Dopamine isn’t the problem though. It’s a progress chemical not a stage III narcotic. 

You get a dopamine rush when you complete something, when you see evidence you are moving forward, or when you succeed. If you never feel like you are succeeding, you lose motivation because you don’t get that nudge. And if you don’t feel the rush, why would you bother chasing the fix? 

Why Small Wins (Micro Victories) Are A Game Changer

Your big goals are important but they aren’t going to give you dopamine. If they do, it will be one time. Guess what? You can get the same rush from making your bed or drinking a glass of water as you can from paying off your mortgage. 

Big goals are far away and easy to fail at. Small goals are achievable and get you closer to your big goals every step of the way. Plus, you can be high as hell on dopamine on the whole trip if you aren’t buried under a three-hundred thing list of things that have to be done.

Micro victories are more likely to keep you going. They give you momentum. Big wins are more likely to make you collapse.

What is a micro victory? It’s anything really. Anything that puts you closer to being the best version of yourself.

Making your bed. Going for a 5-minute walk. Drinking water. Doing a push up Reading one page. One page! Not a hundred. Not a novel. One page. 

Will doing one pushup or reading one page change your life? Probably not - but here’s the hook. Celebrating a micro victory changes the way you experience effort. Not pain - reward. That changes everything. 

How to Win According to Neuroscience

Neuroscientists have discovered that over time, your brain will begin to associate effort with reward.  

Want to win? One small shift can change everything. Log your wins. 

Don’t just cross it off the list. Celebrate it. Share it. Feel the power. That little ‘I did it!’ matters more than you think. Here’s why.

When you log your wins you 1) mark it as complete 2) signal your brain that you have made progress 3) get a release of dopamine (the powerful motivator) from your brain. 

This is why you will feel surprisingly good after tracking a tiny accomplishment. It’s not childish.
It’s neurochemistry. It’s brain science. 

Try it!

Turning Life Into a Game (On Purpose) - and a Surprising Discovery

I asked myself - “What if I gamified my life?”

Gamification has been used  to control and manipulate us because games are addictive, but guess what? Gamification can be used to optimize your life! 

Games are addictive because our brains like having clear objectives, immediate feedback, seeing visible progress, and the perception of frequent wins or milestones achieved. We are wired for that from millions of years of evolution. 

These mechanisms have been exploited by technology platforms for attention extraction. Red notification dots, a buzzing phone, a Duolingo streak reward, a Farmville badge (okay, I’m old), and the list goes on. When most people talk about the attention economy - they are talking about readingand  scrolling and watching but the real economy is in those small dopamine rewards from checking your notifications. The mechanisms themselves are neutral. When applied intentionally and with the right goals in mind, they can support well-being rather than undermine it. The problem is that most tech products are built for shareholder profit not user well-being.

I built Micro Victory Army around a simple idea. “What if we treated every day like a game where small wins actually count? What if we could build an addiction to micro victories?” 

I discovered something I didn’t expect. Something crazy. A bunch of tiny, unimportant, easy micro victories add up to more than the sum of their parts. 

I didn’t need to have perfect habits, strict routine, or a total remake of my inner life. I just needed to do one little thing - log a little win once in a while.  That’s it.

Burnout is everywhere. Motivation is fragmentary. Attention is fractured.  Demanding more from yourself isn’t the answer. Celebrating your tiny (or big, or huge)  wins is.

We don’t need fake positivity. We don’t need toxic productivity advice telling us how to do more. We don’t need to lower our standards. We don’t need “participation trophies.” 

Every Micro Victory is an  actual win. Try it. You’ll see. 

Tiny Wins = Big Life

When you reward effort it compounds your desire to put in more effort.  The difficult becomes easy, momentum builds, your identity shifts from “I can’t catch up” to “I’m someone who follows through”.

Big lives aren’t built through constant pressure like coal  being pressed into diamonds. They’re built through thousands of small, recognized victories, like drops of water finding their way to the ocean..

Sure - diamonds are pretty, but compare one diamond to the ocean? 

You deserve to win. Log a win right now. You deserve it. 

https://www.microvictory.com

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t remember the last time you finished your check list and relaxed your way through the rest of the day. 

Welcome to the ‘Age of Productivity’ where you don’t get to finish one thing without having to figure out which of the next ten tasks most deserve your attention. It’s sick. We’re sick. 

We have forgotten that progress is fueled by tiny steps, not giant leaps. 

You don’t leap your way to the top of the mountain. You take one step at a time and hopefully you enjoy the hike. 

The Productivity Trap

All you have to do is expend endless effort and eventually you’ll get no reward. That’s a crap deal! Do the thing, then optimize, do the next step, finish the thing, feel vaguely behind, and finally you get to be overwhelmed. 

There are countless gurus telling us how to optimize, track habits, set bigger goals, and fix our lives - but they seem to have all forgotten that life is a thing to be enjoyed and those baby steps - those slow hiking steps up the mountain? They are part of the joy too. 

Where is the reward? Overwhelm is not what we should be optimizing for. 

The Truth About Dopamine Addiction

There are countless articles about dopamine addiction. It’s a real issue - especially when the sources of our dopamine hits are unhealthy, but what if we could get dopamine high from doing positive things? What if we could train our body and minds to be better because of the propensity for addiction? Spoiler alert: We can. 

The tech overlords have harnessed dopamine addiction to keep people scrolling on social media, looking at their phones, playing video games. Dopamine isn’t the problem though. It’s a progress chemical not a stage III narcotic. 

You get a dopamine rush when you complete something, when you see evidence you are moving forward, or when you succeed. If you never feel like you are succeeding, you lose motivation because you don’t get that nudge. And if you don’t feel the rush, why would you bother chasing the fix? 

Why Small Wins (Micro Victories) Are A Game Changer

Your big goals are important but they aren’t going to give you dopamine. If they do, it will be one time. Guess what? You can get the same rush from making your bed or drinking a glass of water as you can from paying off your mortgage. 

Big goals are far away and easy to fail at. Small goals are achievable and get you closer to your big goals every step of the way. Plus, you can be high as hell on dopamine on the whole trip if you aren’t buried under a three-hundred thing list of things that have to be done.

Micro victories are more likely to keep you going. They give you momentum. Big wins are more likely to make you collapse.

What is a micro victory? It’s anything really. Anything that puts you closer to being the best version of yourself.

Making your bed. Going for a 5-minute walk. Drinking water. Doing a push up Reading one page. One page! Not a hundred. Not a novel. One page. 

Will doing one pushup or reading one page change your life? Probably not - but here’s the hook. Celebrating a micro victory changes the way you experience effort. Not pain - reward. That changes everything. 

How to Win According to Neuroscience

Neuroscientists have discovered that over time, your brain will begin to associate effort with reward.  

Want to win? One small shift can change everything. Log your wins. 

Don’t just cross it off the list. Celebrate it. Share it. Feel the power. That little ‘I did it!’ matters more than you think. Here’s why.

When you log your wins you 1) mark it as complete 2) signal your brain that you have made progress 3) get a release of dopamine (the powerful motivator) from your brain. 

This is why you will feel surprisingly good after tracking a tiny accomplishment. It’s not childish.
It’s neurochemistry. It’s brain science. 

Try it!

Turning Life Into a Game (On Purpose) - and a Surprising Discovery

I asked myself - “What if I gamified my life?”

Gamification has been used  to control and manipulate us because games are addictive, but guess what? Gamification can be used to optimize your life! 

Games are addictive because our brains like having clear objectives, immediate feedback, seeing visible progress, and the perception of frequent wins or milestones achieved. We are wired for that from millions of years of evolution. 

These mechanisms have been exploited by technology platforms for attention extraction. Red notification dots, a buzzing phone, a Duolingo streak reward, a Farmville badge (okay, I’m old), and the list goes on. When most people talk about the attention economy - they are talking about readingand  scrolling and watching but the real economy is in those small dopamine rewards from checking your notifications. The mechanisms themselves are neutral. When applied intentionally and with the right goals in mind, they can support well-being rather than undermine it. The problem is that most tech products are built for shareholder profit not user well-being.

I built Micro Victory Army around a simple idea. “What if we treated every day like a game where small wins actually count? What if we could build an addiction to micro victories?” 

I discovered something I didn’t expect. Something crazy. A bunch of tiny, unimportant, easy micro victories add up to more than the sum of their parts. 

I didn’t need to have perfect habits, strict routine, or a total remake of my inner life. I just needed to do one little thing - log a little win once in a while.  That’s it.

Burnout is everywhere. Motivation is fragmentary. Attention is fractured.  Demanding more from yourself isn’t the answer. Celebrating your tiny (or big, or huge)  wins is.

We don’t need fake positivity. We don’t need toxic productivity advice telling us how to do more. We don’t need to lower our standards. We don’t need “participation trophies.” 

Every Micro Victory is an  actual win. Try it. You’ll see. 

Tiny Wins = Big Life

When you reward effort it compounds your desire to put in more effort.  The difficult becomes easy, momentum builds, your identity shifts from “I can’t catch up” to “I’m someone who follows through”.

Big lives aren’t built through constant pressure like coal  being pressed into diamonds. They’re built through thousands of small, recognized victories, like drops of water finding their way to the ocean..

Sure - diamonds are pretty, but compare one diamond to the ocean? 

You deserve to win. Log a win right now. You deserve it. 

https://www.microvictory.com