Tell One Person

When to use it: Right after something goes well and you’re about to do absolutely nothing with it — the meeting that landed, the feedback that didn’t sting, the problem you finally cracked. The moment you’d normally just file it and reach for the next task.

Why it’s here: Noticing a good thing privately helps a little. Telling someone helps more. Putting a win into words for another person makes you process it properly instead of letting it slide past, and a small bit of shared acknowledgement makes the thing feel real and worth having done. (Researchers who study this call it capitalising on positive events; the short version is that good news shared lands harder than good news swallowed.) It’s also just a nicer way to work than treating every success as a non-event on the way to the next deadline.

Do this:

1. Pick the thing. One sentence. “The client signed off.” “I didn’t get rattled in there.” “That fix actually worked.”
2. Tell one person. A colleague, a friend, your partner, a quick message to the group chat. Out loud or in writing, doesn’t matter.
3. Let it be a real statement, not a humblebrag or a deflection. Not “ugh, finally” — just “this went well, and I’m glad.”
4. Let them respond. The little back-and-forth is part of why it works.

No one to tell in the moment? Saying it out loud to yourself is a weaker version that still beats nothing. But where you can, use a person.

This is the counterweight to the fact that you’ll happily tell five people about the thing that went badly. Spend at least as much on the things that went right.