Why 1% Better Doesn't Work

This popular self improvement advice is holding most people back.

Be 1% better today than you were yesterday.

When those improvements are compounded over 365 days, you are 37x better than when you started.

Sounds nice, right?

Well, I hate the 1% rule for three big reasons.

Today I am going to explain what these reasons are and I will present a more practical mindset to crush your goals and blow past everyone else.

Let's do it.

1 - Slow Progress

Imagine when you look in the mirror, you are not happy with what you see: your arms look like tubes, your chest sags and your midsection looks like a pear. You have very little muscle on your body and a high percentage of fat despite having a healthy BMI.

This body composition is a classic example of skinny-fat

Now, imagine you started hitting the gym 3x per week and decided to eat a high-protein diet in a 10% calorie deficit.

You follow the basic principle of lifting: good technique, and slowly increase load, reps and sets over time.

Each morning, you wake up, take a dump, weigh yourself, and check for changes in the mirror.

It's been four weeks. You have done everything correctly, but when you look in the mirror, a disappointed expression spreads across your face. You were hoping to see some visual changes by now, but every day you look the same.

Discouraged, you to meet up with a friend for lunch. He hasn't seen you for a while and comments on how you look a bit leaner since the last time he saw you.

You are surprised. You explain to him that you have been training hard for the past month and have been on point with your diet, but you are disappointed with the progress you have made so far.

Your friend looks confused and asks, "Have you taken any progress photos?". You say no because you felt embarrassed to do so.

Your friend assures you that he can tell the difference.

The thing is, our psychology hasn't evolved to notice slow rates of change because things that move slowly are generally not a threat.

The daily improvements in your body are undetectable. You have made progress, but the difference day to day isn't noticeable.

Your friend, on the other hand, hasn't seen your daily progress. He only sees you now compared to back then. To get his perspective and see how far you actually came, you need to look back at progress photos.

We don't perceive changes linearly. We see and perceive changes as events or step changes. This is because our memory works like a camera. It takes snapshots of significant events that happen to us. We remember moments in time but not time itself.

This is why you need to take progress photos during your fitness pursuit. It's why all of your goals need to have a measure of success you can track.

Because imagine you are making slow progress, but you feel like you aren't. You get discouraged and give up.

1% better doesn't work out because it focuses on the daily improvements to measure success for long term goals. Perception aside, it doesn't account for setbacks and plateaus, which are a part of the journey for any goal.

Slow progress feels like no progress and that can be hella demotivating.

2 - Demotivation

What does 1% better even look like?

According to James Clear, 1% better is the tiniest step you can take to progress to a bigger goal.

For example if I wanted to stay a workout routine at the gym, your daily goal isn't to go to the gym. It's to get changed for the gym.

When that gets easy, make it a little bit more difficult. Now open up your front door, but don't actually go to the gym. Keep doing this progression until there is no resistance.

Now make it harder again. Get changed, leave the house, and drive to the gym. But don't go in — you're not ready.

When that gets easy, the difficulty increases. Get changed, leave the house, drive to the gym, go inside and do a warm up exercise and then leave.

heavy sigh

If you are anything like me, this process makes you want to pull out your metaphorical hair.

For some of you, this type of progression could be useful to form the required habits. But for the rest of us who want to get things done, this is just too slow.

I just want to do the thing.

If my goal is to take my ass the the gym then I am going to go the gym.

I find that drawn out process so painful, it's demotivating.

Physiologists have found the fastest way for a person to become demotivated is to feel like their tires are spinning. They are burning fuel but not going anywhere.

A 1% better mindset would kill me and my motivation.

I need big goals.

My goal isn't to go the the gym. My goal is to:

• Get jacked for the boys (previously for the ladies).

• Get fucking strong.

• Get healthy

I'm stacking my whys. That's motivating. Then it's about doing the hard thing … always.

1 percent progressions are bullshit. Make step changes in your life. Stack your whys. Do the thing. Challenge yourself, be out in the deep end and improve faster than you imagine.

3 - Shortsightedness

I tried doing daily reviews over the last few years. Answering the questions: what went well, what can I improve, and what am I grateful for.

Here's what I realized — I hate measuring the day's success.

The practice becomes repetitive. Your focus becomes shortsighted.

You say things like "I'm just taking it day by day". Man, I hate that saying.

There's too much variability in outcomes of daily life. It's too difficult to measure small improvements. It's too easy to be distracted by things that do not matter. And most days feel the same.

Don't lose perspective. Have a vision for the future. Have a plan to get there. Have targets to hit.

Pay attention to the mistakes you are making. But look for trends, not events.

• I don't care if I don't hit my protein goal today. But I do care about my daily averages at the end of the week.

• I don't care if my weight goes up or down each day. But I do care if it is trending up or down across weeks.

• I don't care if I scroll a bit too much on my phone one night. But i do care if you I don't hit my weekly targets for newsletters, videos made and gym sessions.

Something I learnt from Tim Ferriss is, "I am allowed to have bad days, but I am not allowed to have bad weeks".

I do weekly reviews now, not daily. I look for averages and trends. I set new ambitious weekly targets and create a plan for each day accordingly. Some days do not go to plan. That's expected and not something to worry about as long as the workload I set is complete at the end of the week.

I can't measure 1% changes each day. I don't know what that looks like in practice after a month. I expect to feel like I am making no progress most days, but then I look back after months of effort and see steps that have changed and elevate me closer towards my big goals.

"Nothing works, and then everything works", as Dan Koe says,

Extend the time horizon. Aim high. Build projects that pull everything together and flip the switch all at once.

Notice the step changes.

Thats all for today my friends.

Thanks for reading.

Josh