Trading failure for tiny wins
I'm sick of ending each day with a sense of dread. It's time for a change.
Each day, no matter how much I’ve accomplished, I find myself overtaken with a sense of failure. There are the emails left unread. The whiteboard on the fridge is covered with tasks I didn’t complete. Edits on a project procrastinated for another day. A room or two slightly askew. Deep cleaning the bathroom pushed off until tomorrow. Those stretches I need to do for my hip flexors and lower back only pop into my mind right as my head hits the pillow. It’s exhausting.
Failure seems to be a constant in my life right now.
Even trying the perennial self-help recommendation of meditation is just one more exercise in disappointment. My “monkey mind” is completely uninterested in being tamed. I can’t sit on the side of a river and watch my thoughts go by on the water. Instead, my brain wants me to jump into the river to hold onto the thought and get waterboarded as we hit rapids.
And yet, I still try.
Well, most days of the week.
My millennial mind has not been trained to be kind. Well, let me clarify. It hasn’t been trained to be kind to me. I hold myself to completely unrealistic expectations and allow for horrible self talk when I fail to measure up. It seeps into professional, personal, and parenting. I’m unable to speak to myself in the loving way I talk to my daughter. There are no words of affirmation, encouragement, and firm, but kind, discipline. Instead, I chastise, blame, and, on really bad days, belittle myself with my internal monologue.
Overhauling the current operating system of my brain isn’t going to happen quickly. It’s done in tiny steps over time, just like most of the other goals I set for myself.
I’ve eschewed major new year’s resolutions for years now. Instead, I like to focus on micro-goals, which often feed into a lofty, ambitious goals.
For example, let’s say you want to have $20,000 in two years. Then you know you need to save $10,000 a year or break it down even further and you’d need $833.33 a month to go towards that goal. But, woof, what if that doesn’t feel super manageable? You can always play with the timeline. $20,000 ÷ 48 months = $416.67 a month.
Micro-goals still serve a purpose for how I’m approaching 2026, but it’s been a rough couple of months and frankly, I need a lot of wins right now. I have so many to-do’s (many of which are little things I keep putting off) and maybe you do too.
That’s why I’m hosting “Today’s Tiny Task” from January 12 to February 1, 2026.
A doable, daily action item designed to make you feel like you’re ending the day as a winner. Call it a challenge, a journey, a quest, a dare, a goal – whatever you’d like! Each task will be designed to take up no more than 10 minutes.
A list of seven tiny tasks will get emailed to you each Monday morning1. The goal is to accomplish one per day. Some tiny tasks will build upon each other and others will be one-offs. The goal of all of them is to end the day feeling accomplished. At least a tiny bit!
Today’s Tiny Task will only be available to paid subscribers. You can upgrade today and get 10% off for a year.
P.S. I’m obsessed with my new logo and overall branding!! A big thanks to designer Quinn Mason for making it all look so beautiful!
I’m happy to send a daily email, but we all get so many emails that I worried it might be overwhelming instead of motivating! You tell me in the comments if a daily email would be better.
Get out of my head!! Your intro is my inner monologue.
I enjoyed this post and admire your openness in sharing. Having met you in person, even briefly, I was surprised by your reference to a “sense of failure.” While I understand that perspective, it does not align with how I see it. Everyone is entitled to their own point of view, but raising a little one—keeping her safe, fed, growing, and happy—strikes me as a meaningful accomplishment in itself.