I recently started reading the book "Atomic habits" written by James Clear. Although I didn't get too far, only to page 50 or so, I already found something very interesting that I've been thinking about lately, an idea that I encountered in the past but didn't pay that much attention to back then.
I'm talking about the "rule of 1% improvement " or the rule of marginal gains. Basically, if you manage to improve your life or an aspect of it by 1% each day, in a year you'll end up being 37 times better by the time you're done. This also applies for the negative parts - if you get 1% worse each day for a year, you'll end up declining to 0 improvement. This is the explanation and the math that James Clear offers.
I've been thinking about this for a few days now, trying to understand how I could improve what I do by only 1% each day, in a multitude of areas, and I've been coming up with all kinds of ideas that could improve my life, even by a little bit. This concept requires a bit of thinking before it makes sense, so maybe my examples aren't perfect yet, but it's worth giving this a try, to hopefully find better ways to improve what I do.
One of the first things that came to mind was my design / art work. When the season ends and I'm done with work, I want to go back home and try to get back into design / art, with a little more seriousness than before. Although I have some experience with this type of work, I am not at the level that I want, and I don't really call myself an artist any more. I wish to improve, and to become one.
I can begin my journey by working on different projects each day, instead of picking one big thing and working on it for weeks or even months. I can try to always add new elements to those daily projects, to learn new techniques and to try to find ways in which I can take care of the small, repetitive tasks faster, so that I can focus more on the important parts of my work.
I also need to make a habit out of learning about design and art. I will need to spend time each day watching tutorials, trying new tools or new techniques, all in order to get better at creating art. To do this, I can start by setting time aside for learning every day, instead of doing it when I feel like it.
In short, I need to improve my technique by 1%, to increase my knowledge by 1% and the amount of projects I work on by 1%. That should help me get better at creating art.
Maybe I could use the same method to get better at writing as well.
I can try to get better at planning my articles, to think of more ideas ahead of time and to use my sense of observation to get more ideas by just looking at what's around me. Keeping a detailed journal about my daily life and experiences could also help me with the amount of ideas I get. I can also try to think of the structure of my articles before I begin to type, so that I can have a much better sense of direction in my work. I can try to get better at typing without making so many mistakes, by paying attention to every word I type, in order to reduce the amount of time I have to spend editing and fixing small typos.
In short, I need to improve my ability to get ideas by 1%, the way I structure my articles by 1% and my ability to type without making mistakes by 1%.
Those are just two activities that I do that I can try to improve at by implementing small changes that should help me get a bit better at what I do overall.
However, there are also things that I could get better at that would improve my daily life, not only one part of it.
Spending 30 minutes every day learning math for example could help me to better think logically and to have an easier time solving problems. I could also spend the same amount of time learning how to get a website running so that I can begin to write and post articles on a platform that I own. I could experiment with food and try to learn how to cook so that I can eat healthier food and have more energy on a daily basis. The same applies to learning how to sleep.
This is obviously a bit of a "generalization" of the concept from the book. Using the concept of marginal gains to get better at what I want to do means that I would have to nitpick each activity that I wish to do until I understand exactly what steps I need to take until I can get to the result I want, and only then start to think about how I can improve each and every one of them by 1%. That's how it should be done properly. For the sake of keeping the article short however, I made my examples easier to understand.
The main problem we all experience is that we usually think that in order to change our lives we must make a few radical changes and only then we'll see progress. We rarely consider that very small yet constant improvements over a long period of time might yield the same results, with less effort. Using this strategy alongside healthy habit building should allow us to move forward at a steady pace without burning out and without giving up on our newly acquired productive habits.
So, instead of aiming for sudden improvements in radical changes, and quit every time we try to implement the required habits that would lead to such improvements, we could just try to become a little bit better every day. One change or one action that helps us be 1% better every day is much better than any sudden change that would transform our life.