Small wins accumulate

I have been fixated on the "Big Win" lately, the signed contract, the final offer, the breakthrough. When you are ambitious, anything less than the main objective often feels like a failure. If I do not get the offer after five rounds, all the hours of prep feel like a sunk cost.

But I am realizing that is a flaw in my calculation.

I am learning to respect the small win. The practice case where I finally nailed the mental math without pausing. The cold email that actually got a reply. The thirty minutes of deep work I managed to snatch from a chaotic day.

In engineering, we know that a massive structure is just a collection of well placed components. You cannot build a house by only obsessing over the roof, you have to respect the bricks. I spent years in the lab learning this, watching small adjustments compound into something that eventually worked.

I do not know when the big win will come. But today, I am stacking bricks.