1% Better Everyday -- Small and Mighty Changes

Real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions.

While my peers stayed up late and played video games, I built good sleep habits and went to bed early each night.

I made it a habit to lift weights multiple times per week, and the in years that followed, my six-foot-four-inch frame bulked up from a featherweight 170 to a lean 200 pounds.

Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.

The aggregation of marginal gains — searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.

They (habits) seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.

The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York.

Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff — the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet — but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart.

A very small change in destination can lead to a very meaningful change in destination.

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 losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line.

Are you spending less than you earn each month?
Are you making it into the gym every week?
Are you reading books and learning something new everyday?

Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your future self.

Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six months.
#overnightsuccess

Originally posted on medium.