But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.

And every day that clicks by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper.

I like to use that story as an introduction to this idea of making these 1% improvements for a couple reasons.

The first is, excellence, a lot of the time, maybe we can even say most of the time, is not actually about radical change.

It's about a commitment to accruing small improvements day in and day out.

Secondly, it encourages you to focus on trajectory rather than position.

There's a lot of discussion about position in life.

How much money is in the bank account?

What is the number on the scale?

What are the quarterly earnings?

There's all this measurement around our current position.

But what getting 1% better each day encourages is to focus on your trajectory instead.

Am I getting better?

Is the arrow pointed up and to the right?

Or have we flatlined?

Am I getting 1% better or 1% worse?

Because if you're on a good trajectory, all you need is time.

If you have good habits, time becomes your ally.

You just need to let time work for you.

But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.

And every day that clicks by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper.

And so it's very much at the core, it's about encouraging you to focus on trajectory rather than position.

How do you get to 37.78 times better?

Where'd that ratio number come from?

If you get 1% better each day for a year, 1.01 to the 365th hour, then you get 37 times better by the end of the year.

If you get 1% worse, .99 to the 365th hour, then you drive yourself almost all the way down to zero.

You know, look, real life is not exactly like a mathematical equation, right?

Your habits are not exactly like just formula.

But I do think that it highlights an important concept, which is the difference between making a choice that's 1% better or 1% worse on any given day is relatively insignificant.

It's very easy to dismiss.

And this is, I think, one of the things that makes it underappreciated or underestimated.

You're like, what is the difference between eating a burger and fries for lunch today or eating a salad?

Or going to the gym for 30 minutes or not?

Well, on any given day, not a whole lot.

You know, your body looks the same in the mirror at the end of the night.

Scale hasn't really changed.

It's only two or five or 10 years later that you turn around and you're like, oh, you know, those daily choices really do add up.

And I think you see this pattern again and again throughout life.

Like take knowledge, for example.

Look, reading for 10 minutes a day does not make you a genius, right?

It's very easy to dismiss.

But the person who always does that over five or 10 or 20 years, yeah, really meaningful difference in wisdom and insight.

And productivity is the same way.

Doing one extra thing does not make you an all-star.

But again, over a 10 or 20 or 30-year career, that can be a really meaningful difference in output.

So this pattern shows up again and again.

What starts out small and relatively easy to dismiss compounds or turns into something much more significant over time.