We all wish to improve some or other aspect of ourselves. Someone would wish to improve health, someone would wish to improve presentation, someone would wish to improve proficiency in Maths or someone would wish to improve relations. This need of improvement is always there, but, very few of us would be satisfied with our efforts & outcome.
Have you ever wondered why do we fail to improve? There would be many reasons. The reason I’ve found to be most generally present is that we are overwhelmed by the efforts required in changing. We all start with lot of enthusiasm & energy, but it fizzles out in some time. We start by changing so much in our life and so fast that we do not find the drive to continue beyond the initial enthusiasm.
Is it possible to bring about an improvement in ourselves without undertaking drastic changes? Fortunately the answer is ‘Yes’. Yes, we can improve most aspects about ourselves without doing some big bang changes. There is this concept of ‘Small Incremental Changes’. This alters the entire thought process and does that without much ado. Let us understand this ‘Magic of Small Incremental Steps’.
What is ‘Small Incremental Steps’?
To understand this concept in simple mathematics, let us assume we try to change something by 1% a day. So if we start at 100 today, tomorrow we would do 1% more, i.e. 101. Compare that to another scenario where we reduce our effort by 1% every day. So if we start at 100 today, tomorrow we would do 1% less, i.e. 99. Now this process is followed for 365 days, i.e. a year.
1% Improvement every day: (1.01)365 = 37.8
Same effort every day: (1)365 =1
1% reduction every day: (0.99)365 =0.03
So just 1% extra effort every day would bring about almost 38 times change. On the other hand, just 1% less effort every day would bring you close to 0.
Noted author Seth Godin says it very well:
“The thing is, incremental daily progress (negative or positive) is what actually causes transformation. A figurative drip, drip, drip. Showing up, every single day, gaining in strength, organizing for the long haul, building connection, laying track—this subtle but difficult work is how outcome changes.”
With external motivation or radical changes you can go through a sprint. But running a marathon (like life) you have to invariably get into this small baby-steps approach. Radical changes do not get stuck. More often than not the look of the expected final outcome is overwhelming; but looking at the same in small parts feels like achievable.
So, next time you decide about bringing about a change in yourself, remember radical change approach isn’t sustainable. Just start with a baby step and take one more step and follow it up with one more. Keep doing that every day and in some time you would find the targeted improvements actually happening.
About Author
Anurag is a Certified Career Counselor and Coach. He is an Engineer & MBA with 20+ years experience in Education Industry. All of knowledge that you find here stems from first hand experience of coaching thousands of successful students. He has been passionately working in the field of career counseling since 2019.
What’s Taking place i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I have discovered It absolutely useful and it has aided me out loads.
I hope to contribute & assist other users like its aided me.
Great job.
These are actually fantastic ideas in concerning blogging.
You have touched some good factors here.
Any way keep up wrinting.