Little wins: Not all victories at work are going to be epic

On its surface, a quick, successful victory at work — re-upping an existing client, hitting all your deadlines — may seem insignificant but when you start keeping track, they can add up. “Think about how many days you come to

work and go home and feel like you’ve accomplished nothing, even if it’s not true,” says Marianne Faldo, a Bostonbased social worker who specializes in workplace relations. “Something good had to happen to you or you did something good for someone else. If you begin to measure your days differently, you look at your job differently. You enjoy it a little more.”

Brett Hale, a body-shop technician in Oakland, California, says he’s never felt the urge to celebrate the small wins because he always enjoyed the large ones. “I can look at a car that I fixed and man, that’s an accomplishment,” he says. “That makes me feel good.”

But when Hale filled in for his manager, who spent two months recovering after a kidney transplant, Hale says he didn’t work on cars and didn’t feel so good about himself. “I was sitting in this dingy office surrounded by giant, gray file cabinets,” he says. “I was shuffling papers and tracking down parts and calling people

who owed us money. It was terrible. I know people like that stuff but I hated it with a passion.”

When his boss returned, he found his desk void of papers and clutter. When Hale wasn’t busy, he took it upon himself to scan in all the documents and create

a digital database of customers and vendors. “I probably could have paid $50 for some software but I taught myself how to code and I did all the scanning and photo-taking myself,” Hale says. “Every day was a little victory. I’d write ‘scanned F though G” or whatever I did and I’d feel pretty good about myself.”