People write about downward spirals in writing ALL THE TIME. We don’t often pay attention to our upward spirals. What helps us feel excited by what we’re working on? Eager to dig in… ready and open to enter that delicious feeling of flow and absorption?

Teresa Amabile, a Harvard Business School professor, offers a great insight into engagement and creativity in her book on management, The Progress Principle,  co-written with Steven Kramer. You might be asking what business management has to do with you, alone in a room, writing. It helps to know that Dr. Amabile is one of the premier writers and researchers on creative thinking – which can definitely help you “manage” your writing mindset.

Amabile and Kramer were searching for what made some companies effective, and others less so, in the face of challenges, goal changes, good and bad management. The pair found that “progress” played an extremely important role on motivation and positive inner life.

Research Methods & Findings

They asked professionals to keep a daily digital diary – ranking their satisfaction with the day, and telling a single story about the “event of the day.” They also used outside data to track the team’s effectiveness in relation to their goals during the same time frame. Let me first tell you how much data they amassed to draw this conclusion.

  • 3 industries
  • 7 companies
  • 26 teams
  • 238 professionals
  • 12,000 diary pages

Researchers came to see what types of events made the day feel “good” or “bad” to the participants, and could track how long those events impacted subsequent days’ productivity and achievement, and inner satisfaction with their work.

Overwhelmingly, people responded positively to a sense of progress. Progress – even small wins – helped start an upward, positive mental spiral.

  • Best Days
    • 76% included Progress events
    • 13% included Setback events
  • Worst Days
    • 25% included Progress events
    • 67% included Setback events
  • The impact of a setback was 2-3 x stronger and lasted longer than the positive effect of progress, mentally, on the participants.

The sense of progress creates a positive mindset that permits you to have stronger and more present creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality.

Teresa Amabile, Buffalo State College, CEE Keynote, 2013

Progress & the power of small wins

The question writers ask themselves, is: Why do I have good days and bad days of writing, working? Why do I procrastinate sometimes? What would it take to feel like working again? What would it take to write well, with satisfaction? How can I get beyond this current setback?

Progress isn’t always the frontrunner in people’s minds for how to win the day. Many of us pin our hopes on much bigger – if impossible – gains. But the research shows that Steady Eddie really does win the race. Maybe because of the actual work effected day in and day out, but more importantly, because of the mental gains. You feel the progress and you engage differently.

So, ask yourself, how can you create a sense of progress, even if it is NOT in your current work? Perhaps you make a soup, practice your ukulele or clean off your desk. When you can’t write, find another way to feel the sense of progress, and your positive mindset will begin to deliver you back to your essential work.

There, I finished that blog post, I feel better already.

What’s your small win today? Tell us in the FB Group!