What is one percent better? What does that mean in practice?
As I woke up this morning (after struggling with the warm blanket holding me down), I felt a burst of excitement.
It’s been one week.
One week of applying the one percent better mindset.
It started with brushing my teeth. It grew to me becoming a reader. I encompassed journalling. That evolved to contain two entries a day, both ending with gratitude. And now we’re on to meditation. Oh, and I’m focused on my weight loss theory/project.
What is one percent better? It’s focused, continuous improvement.
The concept started in 2003. That’s when Dave Brailsford became the performance director for British Cycling. In the 95 years prior, British cyclers had won a single, lonely gold medal.
What made Brailsford and his team did differently was looking for ways to improve various one percent improvements. They did the obvious stuff, like redesigning the seat for comfort and using alcohol on the tires to make them stick to the track better. But they also looked for things that most others didn’t think of. Which massage gels speed up recovery the most? What’s the best way to wash your hands so you don’t get sick? What pillow and mattress lead to the best night’s sleep?
He called it the “aggregation of marginal gains.” The search for tiny improvements that compound over time.
“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together,” Brailsford said.
Source: Matt Slater, “Olympics Cycling: Marginal Gains Underpin Team GB dominance,” BBC.
In fact, if you compound a daily one percent improvement every day for a year, the math works like this:
1.01365 = 37.8
That’s nearly 38 times better at the end of the year than you were at the beginning.
And, here’s something cool.
The truth is that in these early days, I’m improving at a far faster pace than one percent a day. It’s because these changes are big. They are about adding or eliminating something.
At some point, I’ll need to start making small incremental improvements in some areas. Maybe it will be reading more pages. Perhaps it will be meditating longer. But it will evolve. There’s no doubt about that.
And I’m excited for that moment as well. It will mean that I embraced the growth opportunities I saw. And at that point, I can leverage them. They’ll develop into other, bigger growth opportunities.
This is how continuous improvement works.
This afternoon, I have client meetings.
First, with the guys I told you about a few posts ago. The ones focused on their data.
Then with a client that is himself consulting with someone. Someone passionate about helping others become their best selves.
Just like I am, here with you.
What is one percent better?
It’s what you want it to be. It’s the areas you want to improve in.
But for me, it’s an exciting lifestyle.
Because now I’m looking for opportunities to grow. To evolve. To work on me.
After that, I’ll be off to baseball. Helping those guys get one percent better every day. Even if they don’t know that’s what is happening.
I’m grateful this morning for heated steering wheels. It’s something I never knew I wanted until I had one. Now, the thought of a cold steering wheel makes me shiver. I know. I’m spoiled. And I’m fine with that.
I’m grateful for waking up this morning motivated. I’m blasting through the last of the dashboards and fully prepared for my meetings.
Finally, I’m grateful for another morning of weight loss. Down to 270 pounds. That’s five pounds down. If you can’t be grateful for progress, I don’t know what you can be grateful for.
Talk to you this evening!
