The art of getting 0.1% better each day

The author of the famous self help book “Atomic Habits" says that we should try to get 1% better each day and this wonderful philosophy encouraged me to write this article. I have tried to explain the author’s philosophy by using a real life example in my own words.

Let’s say we decide that we want to learn Guitar and to do so, we convince ourselves that we will do 1 hour or half hour practice daily. And we do that, we definitely continue that for 1 day, 2 days, 3 days and may be for even a week. But the catch here is that if we see a very little progress in it, we don’t consider that as a progress because we were expecting a very good progress somehow, we were expecting to play songs on guitar within a week. This fact demotivates us and we start quitting it by saying that it is too difficult, I am not learning anything, playing guitar might not be my thing blah blah blah. And that’s how we end up quitting our dream of learning guitar.

Now there are many evidences to prove that we did wrong by quitting. We should think about the following questions before quitting:

1. Did all the guitarists in the world learn guitar just in a week?
2. Did all the things we learn in our life or all the things we have achieved was just a matter of week?
3. And if learning guitar is just a week of hard work, then everyone in the world should have done it right?
4. Have we ever thought what is the difference between a guitarist and us? A guitarist today had also started some day some years back right? If he had quitted that time after a week, then would be able to become a guitarist?

If we really understand the psychology behind these questions, then we must realise that being good at anything is not just a matter of 1 week, 2 weeks or so, it is a matter of months and years.

Whenever we see someone got success, we usually attribute it as their overnight success and what we not see is their years of hard work and consistency behind that.

So, when you set out your goals and the path to achieve that, you should try to be consistent at that with the goal of getting atleast 1% better each day with the ultimate goal of achieving success one day. In my opinion even 0.1% will work.

You should find happiness in those small moments of getting better day by day, you should be happy about getting regular at it and when you start becoming consistent at it, you should be positive about achieving the goal of achieving success at that one day.

Sometimes people start saying that this is not my thing, I can not do it just after a week of practicing. If you literally feel it then you should think why you have started it at the first place, you should think about the cue which triggered the craving inside you to do that work. If you recall and still thinks that you were right before, then you should definitely start doing it, give it some more time before quitting. And if you find that the cue which triggered the craving at the first place does not exist anymore, then yes you can think about quitting it and spend time on something more important.

Another thing is when you start getting regular at something then it becomes part of your identity that means then you can say that you are that person who do that particular thing, for example, when you are regular at practicing guitar for more than a year, then it becomes part of your life, identity and you can say that you are a guitarist which motivates you further to be regular at it because it’s a part of your life now. Not playing guitar according to your regular routine can make you antsy.

We saw this philosophy by taking an example of learning guitar, but it is applicable for anything you want to do but could not do, for example, getting regular at doing work out, doing meditation daily etc.

Hence, for anything you are quite motivated to do, you should try to do it regularly, you should definitely dedicate some of your time to do it regularly and believe in the philosophy of getting 0.1% better each day. You will definitely get success one day.

Good Luck. Have a great day ahead.