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Small wins don’t matter (until you forget them)

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Mark Bowley
December 05, 2025

We all know we should celebrate the small wins. But let's be honest, we don’t. We feel good for three minutes, then immediately move the goalposts.

That client project I landed? Forgotten. That problem I finally solved? Already history. The problem isn't just motivation, it’s memory.

Small wins matter three months from now when you're convinced you’ve made zero progress and feeling like a complete failure. You genuinely can't remember doing anything good.

Your brain archived it, deleted it, overwritten it with today’s fresh anxieties.

Your brain is a negativity-biased survival machine. It remembers threats and failures. Wins? Filed away immediately to make room for the next problem. With modern work progress is slow and victories are incremental.

Journaling and gratitude don’t help either. They feel like performative therapy, not actual solutions.

You don't need more introspection. You need proof. A simple, dated list of things you actually did. These are some of my recents:

  • "Made 3 sales on my side hustle today"

  • "Got sweet feedback from a client"

  • "Fixed that bug I've been avoiding"

One line. Timestamped. Done.

When future you is convinced they’re a useless fraud, past you shows up with evidence.

This is why I built Winnny.com. I got tired of forgetting I’d ever done anything worth remembering. So I made the simplest tool: a webpage where you log wins as one-liners, and it randomly resurfaces past wins when you open it.

No app download. No accounts (yet). No social performance. Just proof you've done good things.

It's a prototype. Deliberately minimal, does one thing well (plus… gold confetti).

The fastest way to feel bad isn't failure, it's forgetting you were ever winning.

Small wins matter most when you've forgotten them all and need proof you're not as useless as you currently feel. Log them. Future you will thank you. I know mine will.

Talk soon,

Mark