Small wins are the thing
The largest study of what makes a good workday found one answer, and it was not praise or money.
3 min read
Two researchers collected more than 12,000 daily diary entries from 238 people across 26 project teams. They were trying to find what separated a good day at work from a bad one.
One thing beat everything else, and it was not recognition, a bonus, or an encouraging manager. It was making progress on work that mattered to the person doing it. Small steps forward did more for how people felt than any of the things managers normally reach for.
What that means for a sit
A sit is not one big achievement at the end. It is thirty small ones, and each signed task is one of them. The problem is that they vanish into a total, and a total that moves slowly does not feel like progress even when it is.
This is why BarkCheck shows your recent run of signed tasks and how far the score moved after each sit, rather than only a single figure. It is not decoration. It is the finding above, turned into a screen.
A note on the other direction
The same research found that setbacks hit inner work life harder than progress lifts it. So a bad sit will feel worse than a good sit feels good, and that is normal rather than a sign of anything. Sitting with the last two weeks in front of you, rather than only the most recent day, is usually a fairer picture of how you are actually doing.
Where this came from
We summarized these. We did not run them, and we are not affiliated with anyone who did. If a claim above matters to you, read the original rather than taking our word for it.
- Amabile, T. & Kramer, S. (2011). The Progress Principle. Harvard Business Review Press.
Used here for: The 12,000-diary study and the finding that progress on meaningful work beats recognition and incentives.
Think we have got something wrong, or read a study we should include? Tell us. We would rather fix it than defend it.