I’ve been reading a book called Rise of the Reader by Nick Hutchinson. The book focuses on the importance of reading self-improvement books and how to get the most out of the literature you decide to dive into. It’s a book I highly recommend for many reasons, especially if you want to learn tips on how to read, study, and retain the information, putting yourself in the best position to grow and succeed by utilizing the information at your fingertips. So far, one of the best takeaways I’ve gotten is the concept around improving yourself by 1% each day.
How can 1% change my life?
I’m going to be stealing some things directly from that book, so know that for most of this section, credit needs to be given to Nick. The information is just incredibly beneficial, so I wanted to share it as much as possible. Within the book, Nick states:
“Too often, society convinces us that massive success requires massive action, but that is not true.”
Although taking a ton of action can be of benefit, most people who are very successful at anything they do, obtain that success through small, daily habits. I’ve read similar concepts in books like The Slight Edge and The Compound Effect, but I really like how Nick explained it in his book. The whole idea of this concept is that small, daily action, compounded over time, turns into huge changes. Nick even took it a step further with a little mathematical visualization, given in three scenarios:
Scenario 1: 1.00 ^365=1.00
Scenario 2: 1.01^365=37.78
Scenario 3: 0.99^365=0.03
With the first scenario, you see your current daily actions. These actions are taken for 365 days and the result is no change. Everything stays the same in your life. With Scenario 2, we start to see the incredible power of 1% improvement. Through increasing just 1%, over the span of a year, the result is 37-FOLD IMPROVEMENT. This is why those small, daily actions can have such an impact over time. But this concept does work in the reverse, as displayed in the last scenario. Decreasing your daily action can have a major impact in your life as well, just in a negative way.
I wanted to start applying this to my life…
Hopefully I did Nick’s book justice with my recap. And if he ever somehow finds his way to this blog, I hope he sees this short snippet as me praising his book and not plagiarizing his work :)
The point is, we need to find ways to take small steps towards our bigger goals. I heard someone else on an old CD say it in a unique way. His name was John and he was talking to a crowd of sales people. He asked a question, “How do you eat an elephant?” With the crowd silent, probably slightly perplexed trying to visualize the concept of eating an elephant, John said, “one bite at a time.” We don’t have to take huge steps (or in this case bites), in order to reach our goals. We just need to take small, actionable steps every day.
Which makes total since in my mind. We hear about it all of the time, people talking about how champions are made in the gym or at practice, not on the field during the game. How almost all men in our lives that we put on some kind of pedestal, got there through making small, positive actions and changes every single day when no one else was looking. If it can work for them…why can’t it work for me and you?
This concept of the Compounding Effect can work for us…if we put it to work. Now I’m not an expert on the topic, and I’ve just recently started putting the 1% Improvement to the test in my own life. But tune into my blog tomorrow, and I’ll share exactly how I’m applying it to my life, in hopes you can find a productive way to apply it to your own.
