04 1% Better Every Day

Every day we make around 35,000 decisions a day. As you can expect, many of them are made on autopilot based on how we have been conditioned, cues that push us to do something, and habits we have formed.

With that said, many of those subconscious decisions are also capable of bringing us closer to or farther from the person we want to become.

If we look to our focus for the year, on our vision of who we want to be a year from now, and on our S.M.A.R.T. goals, their success is all prefaced on decisions. Decisions to stop or go. Decisions on what is said and how. It sounds small to say 1%, but compounding 1% daily has a profound impact. Take a look at the curve of doing 1% better or worse over a year’s time period from the book Atomic Habits.

While 1% is not scientific to the exact amount better or more you need to be or do each day, it is the representation to help breakdown a mountain into achievable bite-size tasks. You won’t be able to just run a marathon by running for

So how do we get 1% better every day? What do we have to do?

First things first, we need to be aware of what we are currently doing. The more detail, the more conscious, the more granular we get with understanding our conscious and subconscious decisions, the better we will be able to notify where and how we can improve them.

Therefore in the linked PDF above, list out in detail what you do when you wake up, each snooze if relevant, when you unwind, and when you go to bed. If there are more areas of your life you have habits you would like to assess, please add those as well.

From doing this we can see if those decisions around daily time periods are bringing us close to or farther from succeeding. Then note where or how you can improve those times. If you are brushing your teeth or cooking, you are already standing. Why not march in place to get more steps in a day to bring you closer to fitness goal.

Start small. You cannot achieve 100 push-ups if you haven’t first started with one, then two then three.

Make the changes small. Make the changes super easy. Make them a part of your every day.

Real changes and habits happen from repetition, not the length of time so do it often.

Stop overthinking. Stop planning and ‘putting things in motion’. That is great for mindset, but it isn’t moving you forward at all. You make real change and progress with small bite-sized achievable tasks.

If you want to become a great artist, make it a habit to create a daily sketch every time you unwind. If you want to eat healthier, substitute one food for another without removing it completely. If you want to have a better mindset, instead of hitting snooze, sit up in bed and meditate for those nine minutes.

The options are endless. They can be small. They can be silly. But those small and silly will bring you closer than large and scary.

You are capable, you have all that you need, and you can achieve your greatness 1% at a time. If you would like to add any habits after completing this to your daily Correlation, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me to add.