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Why the “Improve by 1% Every Day” Mantra Is Bullsh*t
Success isn’t that easy
If you’ve spent any time among the “Hey! Let’s all get on our knees and worship success” crowd, you’ve probably heard about the 1% rule of improvement.
It goes something like this:
All you have to do to turn yourself into Mr. Succeed-a-Lot is improve by 1% every day. By the end of the year, you’ll be 37 times better than when you started.
Where does the number 37 come from? Well, it comes from this simple formula:
And this formula is correct. So, yes, if you could improve by 1% every day, then after a year you would indeed be about 37 times better. The problem, though, is that improving by 1% every day for a whole year is pretty much impossible. And here’s why.
1. Most of the time no one knows what “1% better” even looks like
Imagine you want to become a kickass writer and you just stumbled upon the 1% improvement nonsense. “Hooray!” you tell yourself. “In just one year I will be 37 times better. Soon I’ll make words dance so seductively that even the illiterate will beg me for an autograph!”
Well, let’s give this improvement thing a try then.
Here, see this contraption?
Bobby Pumpernickel sneeze farted, that is, he sneezed and farted at the same time.
Well, that’s a sentence. It’s the sort of thing writers spend their time trying to master. Now, please go ahead and make that sentence 1% better.
I’m waiting…
Done? Perfect! Wait. What? You didn’t improve it? Why not? C’mon, this is supposed to be an easy exercise. You just need to improve the sentence by 1%. That’s supposed to be so easy anyone can do it, remember? So what’s the problem?
Oh, improving it by precisely 1% turns out to be too specific for such a wishy-washy task like writing? Well, then let’s just make the sentence better by any amount. Doesn’t matter. Just make it better.
