There is a small risk this blog post will come across as some sort of cheesy bumper sticker psychology hippie new-age healing crystals silent retreat no deodorant oversized sandal wearing guru self-help type of text. I can assure you it is not.

No Big Deal is fundamentally based on research in behavioural economics and consumer psychology. That doesn’t mean we’re in the business of just trying to get people into buying more products. Instead, as pretentious as it may sound, we genuinely want people to feel good about themselves.

All people, regardless of background, shape, or size, want to achieve things. We all have goals, big and small, but quite often we get discouraged. We run into problems and obstacles and the whole thing just seems impossible. At those times, it’s easy to get stuck in negative thinking, and your brain slowly forces you to think about failures and fiascos. The good news is, this is a pretty natural thing to do, and the remedy is just as easy. All you need to do is to start celebrating the small victories. If you listened to RTL Today’s podcast where we were interviewed by Lisa Burke a while ago, we briefly touched upon this subject and the importance of making your bed every morning. A seemingly trivial thing to do, but it has been scientifically proven that by starting your day with an accomplishment, you become much more likely to achieve another one, and then a third one, and so on. It’s just the way we are wired.

At No Big Deal we run a pretty tight and lean operation. We have digital tools for everything we do and we track progress on a daily basis. We also celebrate achievements and some of the tools we use have their own feel-good functionality built in. As soon as you complete a task, you drag and drop from the In Progress bucket to the Done bucket. As a reward you get a tiny unicorn flying across your screen for a few milliseconds.

Ridiculous? Very. Does it work? You bet!

Understanding the mechanisms and psychology behind it does not make you any less likely to feel the sense of accomplishment it generates. And the same principle goes for No Big Deal. It’s about incentivising behaviour that makes you feel good and incorporate it into your everyday activities. Take a challenge, achieve it, get rewarded and move on to greater things. We know that it works, and as founders of this company, we are very much the typical end users. I’m quite sure I’ll be one of the most prolific walkers when we launch.

So, it could be that what is standing between you and a major accomplishment is nothing other than a small accomplishment. Seems size doesn’t matter after all.