It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment
and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily
basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires
massive action. 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.
Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—
sometimes it isn’t even
noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful,
especially in the long run. The difference
a tiny improvement can make
over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get
1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times
better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse
each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts
as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much
more.
1% BETTER EVERY DAY
1% worse every day for one year. 0.99
365
= 00.03
1% better every day for one year. 1.01
365
= 37.78
FIGURE 1: The effects of small habits compound over time. For example, if
you can get just 1
percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are
nearly 37 times better after one year.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same
way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of
your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little
difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the
months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two,
five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the
cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.
This can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life. We often
dismiss small changes because they don’t
seem to matter very much in
the moment. If you save a little money now, you’re still not a
millionaire. If you go to the gym three days in a row, you’re still out of
shape. If you study Mandarin for an hour tonight, you still haven’t
learned the language. We make a few changes, but the results never
seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines.
Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to
let a bad habit slide. If you eat an unhealthy meal today,
the scale
doesn’t move much. If you work late tonight and ignore your family,
they will forgive you. If you procrastinate and put your project off until
tomorrow, there will usually be time to finish it later. A single decision
is easy to dismiss.
But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating
poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little
excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. It’s the
accumulation of many missteps—a 1 percent decline here and there—
that eventually leads to a problem.
The impact created by a change in your habits
is similar to the effect
of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you
are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from
LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in
Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely
noticeable at takeoff—the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet—
but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up
hundreds of miles apart.
*
Similarly, a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a
very different destination. Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1
percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of
moments that make up a lifetime
these choices determine the
difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the
product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
That said, it doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are
right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the
path toward success. You should be far more concerned with your
current trajectory than with your current results. If you’re a millionaire
but you spend more than you earn each month, then you’re on a bad
trajectory. If your spending habits don’t change, it’s not going to end
well. Conversely, if you’re broke, but you
save a little bit every month,
then you’re on the path toward financial freedom—even if you’re
moving slower than you’d like.
Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth
is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging
measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of
your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning
habits. You get what you repeat.
If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do
is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily
choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. Are you
spending less than you earn each month?
Are you making it into the
gym each week? Are you reading books and learning something new
each day? Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your
future self.
Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will
multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad
habits make time your enemy.
Habits are a double-edged sword. Bad habits can cut you down just
as easily as good habits can build you up, which is why understanding
the details is crucial. You need to know how habits work and how to
design them to your liking, so you can avoid the dangerous half of the
blade.
