I first read about the 1% rule back in 2013, in James Altucher’s book Choose Yourself,
since then it’s become a widely accepted and celebrated concept in the productivity space, with James Clear leading the conversation (read Atomic Habits to learn more about tiny gains)
the concept is simple,
become 1% better by improving a little each day.
there’s two reasons why this works so well:
- by giving yourself permission to improve, you build momentum, which will feed the need to keep improving
- by becoming marginally better every day, it compounds to the point that if you were to be consistent over the course of a year, you will end up 37 times better by the time you’re done (I shamelessly copied the math from James’s website here)
you can apply this concept to literally any habit or skill you can think of,
get creative with it, what is the absolute bear minimum you can do to become marginally better?
floss one tooth?
take one deep breath?
write one sentence a day?
intensity makes a good story,
consistency makes progress.
bonus!
if you’re like me and slowly compounding progress isn’t good enough of a motivator,
I occasionally tap into my competitive mindset and remind myself that,
everyone is already doing 100% of what they are,
if you want more, you have to become more.
101%
I’ll see you tomorrow.
today is day 224 of the year, there are 143 days remaining of 2022.
