Why Even 1% Change Is Massive To Your Success (Ezine article)

This is a nostalgic blogger post from the early beginnings of blogging. If you had not enough time to come up with something good and original you turned to ezine. And good old ezine is still around. I hope you like it in the absence of me preparing my next post....

Humans tend to underestimate the effect of small, tiny or microscopic things.
That's why when those little bad habits don't seem too harmful to cause any major problems, we tend to ignore them and allow these bad habits to build up.
That's understandable because our minds are not capable of accurately estimating and easily imagining the kinds of damage a petite size of problem can potentially cause.

So if that bad habit causes only 1% decline in your life quality per week, you probably won't notice a significant adverse effect until one year later when there's a decline in 52% of your life quality. (Note: We haven't even calculated the compound effect of previous accumulations.)

Conversely and luckily, the same thing applies to our good habits.
If we only improve ourselves for 1% per week, we will become 52% better in just a year and we will have 52% of improved life quality. It's a pretty big deal.
Now you may say, 1% change sounds good in principle, but does it really work in real life?
You bet.

Dave Brailsford is a British cycling coach. Back in 2010, he was hired as the General Manager of Great Britain's professional cycling team called Team Sky.
Brailsford developed a technique called the "aggregation of marginal gains". He believed that a 1% margin for improvement will affect everything you do.

So apart from the regular optimization of cyclists such as the nutrition of riders, their training programs, the weight of the tires, Brailsford also searched for 1% improvements in areas where other coaches overlooked.
That ranged from discovering the best pillow that offered the best sleep, the most effective type of massage gel, to the best way to wash their hands so they don't get infected.

Before Brailsford joined the team, no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France. But since the implementation of these 1% changes, Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win that in 2012.
That's only 3 years!

What's even more uplifting is that in the same year, the British cycling team dominated in the 2012 Olympic Games and won 70% of the gold medals available.

So here's the lesson you can extract: It's always easy to overestimate the importance of the one defining moment (aka. the so-called overnight success) and underestimate the intrinsic value of making better small decisions every single day.

If you truly want to make a drastic change, no problem, it surely can happen.
But you must focus on the small, unnoticeable, seeming-unimportant changes and do that consistently over time.
This is the power of compound effect. This is the power of consistency. This is the power of small wins and slow gains.
Pay attention to your current habits.

If you're remaining stagnant or stable, you are backsliding.
If you're becoming just a little better than yesterday, you are progressing.
Master your habits and master your life.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Keye_Wu/2314157

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