Big Idea Daily | Atomic Habits
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An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Onesby James Clear |
“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."JAMES CLEAR |
BIG IDEA #1
Why Tiny Changes Lead to Remarkable Results
FROM THE BOOK“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 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. 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.” |
Brian's Notes
That’s from Part I: The Fundamentals, Chapter 1: The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits. James kicks the book off with the story about Brailsford and his astonishing turnaround of the British cycling team via marginal gains. Moral of that story: Little things matter. A lot.
We talk a lot about Optimizing just a little more every day, aggregating and compounding those tiny little gains over an extended period of time. Now, we have the math for what happens when we get just 1% (!) better every day for a year. We’re 37 (!!!) times better.
But get this. Create a spreadsheet (like this) and run that 1% daily improvement out for another year. Guess what? After two years, you’re not 74 times better. You’re now 1,400 (!!) times better.
Why stop there? Run it out another year. After the third year of aggregating and compounding those 1% gains, you’re now 53,405 times better. Four years? You’re 2,017,828 times better. Five years? You’re 76,240,507 times better.
Shall we run it 10 years out? OK. Let’s. Result: Well, on day 3,472 we hit our last normal number. We’re 998,822,690,009,590 times better. (That’s nearly a quadrillion times better by the way.) Then we break our Google Spreadsheet by day 3,650 when we’re at 5.87074E+15. I don’t even know what that means but I assume it’s even more zeroes. lol.
All that to say: Little things matter. A lot. Especially when we compound them over time.
Of course, those numbers get absurd quickly. But… THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!! (Laughing.)
Harvard Professor (of the Psychology of Possibility) Ellen Langer comes to mind. She tells us that our potential is UNKNOWABLE. Literally. It’s impossible to know what we’re capable of until we actually let go of the limits. And start doing the little things. Consistently.
Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to mind as well. In Self-Reliance, he has a great line about the fact that great human beings have an aura about them. He says that it’s almost as if they have a train of angels escorting them. (Perhaps that’s what the “E+15” means in our math above. :)
As he puts it: “The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels.”
P.S. Here’s another way James puts it: Imagine a plane taking off from LAX. The desired destination is New York City. But… If the nose of the plane is pointed just 3.5 degrees south and the pilots don’t correct for it, they’ll land in Washington D.C. rather than NYC. 90 inches off at the start equals hundreds of miles off at the end. Again, little things matter. A lot.
P.P.S. One very important thing to remember. Compounding is magic. AND… Although we’ll never be perfect, to see the benefits we need to make sure we don’t give back our gains.
We talk a lot about Optimizing just a little more every day, aggregating and compounding those tiny little gains over an extended period of time. Now, we have the math for what happens when we get just 1% (!) better every day for a year. We’re 37 (!!!) times better.
But get this. Create a spreadsheet (like this) and run that 1% daily improvement out for another year. Guess what? After two years, you’re not 74 times better. You’re now 1,400 (!!) times better.
Why stop there? Run it out another year. After the third year of aggregating and compounding those 1% gains, you’re now 53,405 times better. Four years? You’re 2,017,828 times better. Five years? You’re 76,240,507 times better.
Shall we run it 10 years out? OK. Let’s. Result: Well, on day 3,472 we hit our last normal number. We’re 998,822,690,009,590 times better. (That’s nearly a quadrillion times better by the way.) Then we break our Google Spreadsheet by day 3,650 when we’re at 5.87074E+15. I don’t even know what that means but I assume it’s even more zeroes. lol.
All that to say: Little things matter. A lot. Especially when we compound them over time.
Of course, those numbers get absurd quickly. But… THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT!! (Laughing.)
Harvard Professor (of the Psychology of Possibility) Ellen Langer comes to mind. She tells us that our potential is UNKNOWABLE. Literally. It’s impossible to know what we’re capable of until we actually let go of the limits. And start doing the little things. Consistently.
Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to mind as well. In Self-Reliance, he has a great line about the fact that great human beings have an aura about them. He says that it’s almost as if they have a train of angels escorting them. (Perhaps that’s what the “E+15” means in our math above. :)
As he puts it: “The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels.”
P.S. Here’s another way James puts it: Imagine a plane taking off from LAX. The desired destination is New York City. But… If the nose of the plane is pointed just 3.5 degrees south and the pilots don’t correct for it, they’ll land in Washington D.C. rather than NYC. 90 inches off at the start equals hundreds of miles off at the end. Again, little things matter. A lot.
P.P.S. One very important thing to remember. Compounding is magic. AND… Although we’ll never be perfect, to see the benefits we need to make sure we don’t give back our gains.
Big Ideas
01: TINY CHANGES
02: LATENT POTENTIAL
03: IDENTITY
04: THE 4 LAWS
05: THE SORITES PARADOX
“You should be more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results. ... 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."JAMES CLEAR |
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