Little Wins Are the Secret to Motivating Your Team — and Yourself Stop focusing on competitors' success stories, but instead on your small victories.

About writing, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, once said, "You only fail if you stop."

When I began my book Automate Your Busywork: Do Less, Achieve More, and Save Your Brain for the Big Stuff, I thought getting started would be the highest hurdle, but upon finishing the introduction, I realized that keeping momentum was going to be an even bigger challenge.

Unlike my leadership work as a CEO, this process was a slow burn, and measuring progress wasn't as intuitive. At a certain point motivation waned, but then I read a 2017 article in The Guardian about another first-time author, Wyl Menmuir, whose approach was setting a daily goal for himself: 500 words a day. He also celebrated milestones — like reaching 10,000 and 20,000 words — and though it took longer than anticipated, completed his novel.

I took a page from Menmuir's book, as it were, set a daily word goal, and took myself to lunch every time another 5,000-word mark was hit. Pretty soon, it became easy to envision each step as part of a larger accomplishment, and a year later a first draft was complete.

This turned into an even broader lesson: the power of celebrating micro-victories, and how I could use it to motivate my team at Jotform.

Related: 31 Small-Business Wins to Keep You Motivated This January

Set clear goals and track progress

If you've read my work, you know that I'm given to banging the automation drum, but the associated goal isn't just to speed through a workday while doing more, but rather to use automation to make time for more meaningful tasks. As I realized early in my entrepreneurial journey, barreling through items on a to-do list did not produce a feeling of accomplishment. Doing more of the things that truly moved the needle, however — for me and my company — buoyed motivation, satisfaction and success. Experts call this the "progress principle."

As authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer explained in a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation and perceptional ability during a workday, the most important is making progress on meaningful work. That story, in part, detailed an exhaustive analysis of diaries kept by knowledge workers, and noted that on people's "best mood days," 76% of workers made steps forward, while only 13% suffered setbacks. They also discovered that minor wins had a disproportionate and positive effect on mood. In short: small victories go a long way.

As leaders, we can't force employees to advance. In fact, micromanaging tends to have the opposite effect. Instead, the Harvard authors recommend employing progress "catalysts," or support actions, such as setting clear goals, allowing autonomy, providing resources and time, and helping with the work.

So, we began having weekly demo days at the office — all-hands meetings for discussing the latest projects and ideas — an open dialogue in which we reflect on what we're doing, where we're going and how far we've come, on both micro and macro levels. Part of this process is setting specific goals and keeping tabs on progress, which make us all more cognizant of smaller milestones, and keeps things moving forward.

Related: 5 Tips for Effective Team Meetings

Make time for the big stuff

The progress principle emphasizes that work must be meaningful — rewarding on a personal level. For example, my company offers time-saving tools like online form builders. We're not revolutionizing the auto industry or launching rockets into outer space, but I take real pride in making users' lives a little bit easier.

At both Jotform and elsewhere, every job has busywork — unavoidable, manual tasks that keep the lights on — such as invoicing, filing and organizing meeting notes. But if an effort is made to rethink this work by breaking tasks down into their smallest parts and automating as many as possible, the result, ideally, is more time to concentrate on the "big stuff:" more creative and strategic work.

For example, let's say that you need a quiet environment in order to do thinking, but aren't in a position to silence emails completely in case there's an emergency. In that case, take advantage of your email client's "read later" function to automatically deliver selected messages (such as valuable but non-urgent newsletters) into a designated folder, and without notifications. Then, when you're ready to catch up (aka tackling busywork), all those emails are waiting for you.

Celebrate success

In today's social media-dominated world, we have a front-row seat to everyone else's business and career accomplishments. This can make ours seem insignificant by comparison, but it's vital to resist the urge to let other people's public triumphs be your benchmark.

As another Harvard Business Review author suggested, if you're struggling to find a small win, try this: go even smaller. For example, break down a recent project into all of its components, then reflect on which ones went well, and particularly those that went better than expected. Even the tiniest victory can be a morale boost.

And sure, you could go for the full-on award ceremony option, but just about any public recognition is effective, whether via newsletter or in a Zoom meeting or Slack channel.

Related: 5 Ways to Celebrate Small Wins on Your Way to World Domination

As entrepreneurs, it's easy to get caught up in chasing headlines detailing the unicorns and seemingly overnight success stories, but I've found that focusing on our own (and our teams') small steps and wins is a more sustainable way to build both a viable business and a rewarding career.