Happy 2023! When New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday (as it did this year), many companies treat Monday, January 2nd as a day off — to make sure we don’t miss out on a free-from-work day just because the holiday landed on a weekend.

I didn’t, though. Having just launched my new business, Lex Friedman Consulting, I wanted to hit the ground running. And I had a few potential clients who were willing (and even eager!) to talk Monday. So we talked Monday.

I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing work/life balance. Rather, I was excited to get to dive into building my own thing.

But even more importantly, I felt like I got a head start on the year. I played a little game with myself, and I’m still feeling it on Tuesday, January 3rd: I’m ahead of the game, because I worked yesterday when almost no one else did.

I don’t know how long the feeling will last — likely just a few more days — and if I know intellectually that if I probe that feeling closely, it doesn’t really make sense. I did a few calls yesterday, it’ll all balance out eventually; maybe others will work later than I do today. But I don’t need to probe this feeling, because it’s empowering and motivating: I’m ahead of the game! I worked yesterday!

We play these positive mind games with ourselves all the time. (We play negative ones, too, but that’s a topic for another time.) A personal favorite for me is the reward game: “I can refill my coffee when I finish these two emails.” “I’ll take a ten-minute walk after I finish writing this presentation.” “Once I finish wrangling this spreadsheet, I can play today’s Wordle.”

I’m a grown man; I can play Wordle whenever the hell I want. But there’s a benefit to holding off and using it as motivation instead.

In many ways, this is an offshoot of my advice about confidence. As I’ve said, the secret to building confidence is faking confidence. So even if I know that I’m not really ahead of the game because I worked yesterday, and even if I know I could go refill my coffee now and not force myself to wait until after I’ve finished this post — I can fake things with myself, too. So long as I’m doing it as a force for good, for positive outcomes, there’s no downside to faking things with myself this way.

So find those small wins, small motivations, and small ways to congratulate and reward yourself. They matter.