When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, we enter the New Year excited to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. We set aggressive goals for the year ahead and try to change EVERYTHING immediately. We jump head-first into working out daily or eating healthy every meal…and when we fail to see changes the first few weeks or months, we stop.
Too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. James Clear said it best, “Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about”.…and we try to do so within a matter of weeks or months.
The key to long-term, sustained success is making small, incremental changes every day. Clear calls this marginal gains. Entrepreneur James Altucher calls it 1% improvements. Whatever you dub it, it works.
1% improvements each day may not show noticeable gains day-over -day, however, month-over-month, the dividends are huge. Slowly, these small changes accumulate into significant advantages, and practice forms a habit.
So where are the 1% improvements in your life? Where do you want to focus your efforts in the next decade? Do you want to read more? Earn a promotion at work? Practice gratitude? Think about what you want to achieve, then follow this simple formula:
Assuming you get 8 hours of sleep a night, that leaves 16 hours to do something to improve. 16 hours x 60 minutes = 960 minutes. 1% of 960 is 9.6. If you add just 10 minutes of something into your life each day, you’ll achieve large gains over the course of the year.
If your goal is to read more, dedicate time to read 10 minutes a day, or commit to reading 5 pages a night. If you want to earn a promotion at work, try spending 10 more minutes in the morning beginning your toughest project. If you want to practice gratitude, devote 10 minutes each day to reach out to those who have helped you achieve success or fulfillment.
We can all find 10 minutes in our day to commit to something. Now the question is, how will you improve your life by 1% this year?
If your focus is on your career, we can help.
