04: The case for becoming the 1%.
“ Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” -George Benard Shaw.
Happy Holidays to everyone. If everything went as well as you wanted it to, awesome. If it didn’t, you’re probably conjuring up those new years resolutions that you want to try and commit to. So, what’s it gonna be in 2020? Lose weight? Bring up that credit score? Finally build that AR-15 from scratch? ( Sorry. Shameless personal plug). Whatever your resolutions are, let’s keep it a hundred, you’re going to fail.
I’m not trying to put down your start to 2020. I’m not saying this for clickbait or any other weak, modern reason just to suck you into reading this blog. I’m saying it because you, like me, have trash habits with lofty expectations of yourself that you will never succeed. If your face is turned up right now at me, remember, a major part of this blog is #selfreflection. Taking a look at the real you, identifying areas of concern and rebuilding them. Your habits are a major part of that rebuild.
After trying and failing at 90% of the habits that I tried to build in 2019, I only succeeded at about 3 of them. Why? Is it because I didn’t want to succeed? Nah, I really wanted those goals. I think it’s because my expectation of success was too big and I also had too many goals. For example, I wanted my clothing company to make a major jump in 2019. In my mind(important) I wanted to make a significant dent in market share and debut new clothing every season, instead of randomly releasing new styles as I saw fit. I partially succeeded. While I made some significant deals, released clothing according to the planned schedule, and increased profit, I still didn’t achieve “my” goals. What if I instead said, “ I want to improve on every measurable metric by just 1%”. Using that as my new metric, I would have easily succeeded, but you and I both know, that’s not enough for us. It’s either 100 or nothing. That’s the real problem.
That’s why I want to advocate for just 1% in 2020. Whatever your goals are: weight, bills, a new hobby. Aim for being 1% better in 2020 than you were in 2019 and being satisfied with that progress. Very few people can be 100% better than they were in 2019. What would that even look like? Losing 100+ lbs in a year, raising your credit score 200 plus points? How many people do you see achieving these goals on a regular basis? Not many, but that’s what we aim for, and when that goal is not achieved, we are super hard on ourselves. If you went to the gym regularly, but only went for 20 mins at a time, what if you went for 30 mins? Going three times per week, that’s an extra 30 mins per week, 120 mins per month, and 1,440 mins per year. That’s an amazing increase with just 10 more mins of effort. Small, yet effective.
That’s about it for 2019. Review it. Give yourself credit for the things you did correctly. Admit that you failed at a few things, examine them, but don’t dwell on it. Give yourself new goals, but instead of aiming for the finish line, aim for improvement. It has been a pleasure over the last few weeks to create and publish this blog. My goal for it is to encourage you every month and for you to encourage me. Thank you for spending a few mins with me and enjoy the new year celebrations.
-A.
“Overnight successes are generally years in the making. And most progress is made in isolation, not in the public eye”. Andrew Yang.
