Weekly Wins Exercise
In order to do a weekly win practice, think back over the past week and list out things which you are proud of. What are some ways you feel like you’ve progressed? There are a few key points to remember
- Focus on things you feel are actual wins. Don’t lie to yourself. You want to generate positive feelings, and lying can generate feelings of shame and guilt that you should be happier about something.
- Focus on celebrating consistency and quality of effort. You want to consistently reward yourself for effort, which is in your control. So be sure to think about where you’ve been proud to put in effort.
- Think about what you’d like to be writing about next week. You don’t have to write it down but acknowledge any short term goals you have over the next week that come to mind as you write.
Spend 10 to 15 minutes doing this once per week.
What is a weekly win practice?
A weekly win practice is the idea of accounting for what you feel like you’ve done well over the last week. What you write about can be small, but the things on the list should feel genuinely positive to you. Weekly win practices are not necessarily researched in scientific literature, but have a strong scientific basis as you can read about below.
The benefits of a weekly win practice
Better Task Performance
There is one major that is shown in the research that stems from a weekly win practice like this, which is better task performance. This works through a combination of factors such as rewarding effort, participation in goal setting, short term of proximal goals, and boosting beliefs in self-efficacy. You can read more about those mechanisms below in “Why does a weekly win practice work”.
Many studies have shown that having near-term goals, feeling continual progress, or receiving consistent rewards has a positive effect on task performance. In “Effects of effort attributional feedback on children's perceived self-efficacy and achievement”, researchers found that “percepts of efficacy and training progress each accounted for a significant increment in the explained portion of variability in posttest skill.” Meaning students in the study who felt like they were effective and making progress performed better on math tests later.
Another study titled “Effect of self-efficacy, goals, and task strategies on task performance” found that knowledge of progress in combination with goals contributed to better results than just goals or just knowledge of progress alone. So both having a goal in mind and knowing you’re making progress to it is particularly effective.
More Resilient
Students who ranked highly on measures of self-perceived competence were more persistent and less anxious. However high perceived self-competence without a goal leads to lower persistence and poorer study results. Similar to the study above, having confidence in your ability in combination leads to the best outcomes.
Another thing to consider is that we set our goals based on the beliefs we have about ourselves. So boosting beliefs of self-efficacy can change the way we think about our goals, and their achievement.
Positive Mood
One 2019 study found that actively up-regulating positive emotions led to increased activation in the ventral striatum, a brain region linked to reward processing and emotional regulation. The study also found that those who successfully up-regulated experienced higher levels of positive affect in their daily lives over the 10-day period of the study.
Why does a weekly win practice work?
The weekly practice of accounting for small wins works by many different mechanisms. We’ll look specifically at the mechanisms specifically for our recommended approach to this exercise. Unlike many of the exercises we recommend, weekly win accounting has not been studied directly, therefore we present a lot more research here as to why we suggest to do it the way we do.
Rewarding Effort
Rewarding effort is one key factor that makes the practice effective. Because effort is controllable, recognizing and emotionally celebrating wins can be a great way to reinforce putting in effort. One study from 2018 showed that unreliable feedback loops reduce reward prediction in the brain. By focusing on effort we can increase the predictability of feeling success.
Rewarding effort is also important because we are actively choosing to up-regulate positive emotions around things we genuinely feel good about. Actively choosing to amplify our existing positive emotions leads to better overall positive affect.
Often when we think about complex or abstract goal setting we can’t directly “do” a goal or a desired outcome. In these cases we break down the sub-goals or actions we think will achieve the goal. Focusing on consistency of effort acts as a “proximal goal” or close-up goal, that we can continually measure progress against and feel good about.
Participation in Goal Setting
By focusing on things you think are actual wins, rather than extrinsic rewards from other people that are out of your control, you participate in the goal setting process explicitly. One study in 1985 found that in children learning subtraction, participation in the goal setting process led to better results than just setting proximal goals, and significantly better than setting no goals.
Proximal Goals
Having proximal goals, or near term goals, has been shown to increase motivation and goal attainment. It’s also been shown that having less direct, abstract, or distant goals has a completely different effect in the brain compared to long term goals and has “no demonstrable effects” on task performance, when studied in a 1981 study.
Having proximal goals lets you focus on small but consistent wins, which has been shown to be important for continuing effort [1][2]. On the other hand, as mentioned previously, unreliable feedback loops lessen the predictive activation of the reward center in the brain.
Long term or distant goals may still be useful for planning purposes, but when it comes to task performance or goal attainment, having shorter term goals that contribute to your long term goals is superior. By focusing on one week at a time, we think about what we’ve achieved in the last week and naturally focus on what we want to happen over the next week.
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is the belief in your own ability to succeed. Several studies [1][2] that perceived self-efficacy was related to actual performance. Furthermore self efficacy and how we feel about ourselves also determines the kind of goals we set, rather than past performance. On the flip side, there’s a short term correlation between depression and self perception of academic performance, rather than actual performance. For these reasons it’s important to cultivate self-efficacy beliefs.
Considerations of a weekly win practice
It’s important to consider that depression can have a negative impact on the ability to activate reward centers in the brain [1][2], vastly reducing the effectiveness of the practice. It’s also important to consider that we should focus on things we actually feel are small wins. Focusing on small wins that we feel annoyed at, shameful for, or embarrassed by, won’t lead to activation, and in fact will condition ourselves in a negative way.
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