Little victories go a long way

Want to build positive momentum?

Aim for little victories that get you back on track.

When I was sick with the nasty lil’ bug goin’ round the world, I wasn’t motivated to do anything but lay around and feel like shit. 

This went on for days, which turned into weeks and ultimately, a few months. 

In addition to barely having energy to relocate from bed to the couch, I was battling depressive and anxious thoughts the entire time. 

But eventually, I decided that those feelings weren’t doing me any good and I needed something to get back on the rails and moving forward. 

I was searching for small projects to tackle to take my mind off the fact that it felt like 10 water jugs were sitting on my chest at all times.

And that’s when I turned my attention to my email account. 

For years, I looked at my inbox with utter dread. 

There were years and years worth of emails piled up, one after another, with no rhyme or reason. Yeah, they were all read, but they just lay dormant and ultimately, served no purpose as they were. 

It essentially amounted to a digital morgue. 

Motivated to do something productive, I decided to turn my inbox into something valuable for my business. 

I hatched a plan to create a customized and comprehensive categorization system that incorporated tagging each and every email that has been sent and will be sent to me. 

I don’t have a CRM, so I decided that my inbox will now become the hub for all of my conversations and relationships maintained through email.

After I took a couple long sighs when I realized how much time this was going to take…

Thousands of emails…

One by one…

Ugh, jeez…

I leaned into this massive undertaking.

After a couple hours spread over a few days, I came away with a completely revolutionized inbox. 

Over 20 categories that identifies and sorts potential clients, promotional opportunities, digital receipts, strategic partnerships, introductions, and colleague notes, just to name a few. 

The best part?

When I now look at my inbox, the only thing that sits in there are the current conversations that I’m having with various folks, all color coded and tagged within a specific category. 

In essence, my inbox has transformed from a depository of old emails collecting dust to a very active space that behaves similar to a CRM.

When I finished the project, a sense of achievement and accomplishment washed over me, and I couldn’t help but share the news with my colleagues and friends who would appreciate the geekiness of the feat.

This project helped snap my brain out of it’s funk and generated a healthy dose of positive momentum at a time in my life when I needed that really, REALLY bad. 

While I now feel way more in tune with all of the different conversations I’m having with people from all areas of my life, I didn’t realize the hidden, intangible benefits of the effort at the outset. 

That positive momentum ultimately helped to elevate my mood, and that attitude has permeated to other areas of my life, including all the virtual work that I’ve tackled recently. 

In this case, the juice was certainly worth the squeeze. 

What about you…

If you find yourself in a funk and spinning your wheels going nowhere, what is a small project that you can tackle right now that will generate positive momentum and move you forward?

Share that project below as a way to hold yourself accountable that you will, in fact, work on it over the next week or month. If you want, I can help you with that accountability, just ask, :)

PS - If you found this article valuable, I invite you to join my email list so that you save yourself from commuting to my blog every time I post something new, :)