As a staff+ engineer, everything I do operates on a long timescale. I’m often coordinating multiple projects that work toward larger goals. My coordination doesn’t bear fruit until other pieces release. I don’t get the gratification of quick releases that solve immediate problems. My work prevents problems tomorrow, so it isn’t necessarily visible today.

This creates a motivation problem. When you’re months away from seeing results, it’s hard to feel like you’re making progress. The day-to-day work feels abstract. Did I actually accomplish anything today?

Research on workplace motivation backs this up. Studies show that making progress in meaningful work is one of the strongest drivers of positive mood and motivation, even when that progress is small. These small accomplishments are called micro-wins - incremental victories that celebrate progress rather than just final outcomes. The problem is recognizing that progress when it happens. Harvard Business Review and Ness Labs both have really great articles detailing this.

I had been writing down small accomplishments in a notebook, but the friction was too high. I’d forget to do it, or the notebook wouldn’t be nearby when I finished something worth noting. I needed something closer to my workflow.

Since I live in the terminal, I built a CLI tool called brag. It’s straightforward. Log accomplishments as they happen with minimal friction. Review them at the end of the week. Tag recurring themes to show concrete impact.

The tool tracks micro-wins - things like holding a kickoff meeting with engineering managers to develop an IC training program or finalizing the scope for a multi-quarter reliability initiative. These aren’t deliverables. They’re the incremental work that generate deliverables.

At the end of each week, I review the log and tag entries. I made up the term “macro-wins” for these tags. They’re themes that group related micro-wins together. When I search brag for entries tagged “mentorship”, I get a collection of small accomplishments that demonstrate concrete impact in that area. The macro-win isn’t a single achievement. It’s the accumulated evidence of consistent effort.

The act of logging matters as much as reviewing. When I finish something, even something small, I log it. That acknowledgment helps me recognize progress in the moment rather than weeks later when I’ve forgotten the details.

I built this with Claude Code in a morning. It’s just a vanilla CLI app. Nothing fancy. But it solves the specific problem I had - staying aware of tiny accomplishments that compound into bigger impact without the friction of a notebook or a separate app.

The tool is open source if you want to try it or adapt it for your own workflow. For me, it’s been useful for accepting that progress happens slowly when you’re working on long timescale problems.