Since The Way of Excellence came out five weeks ago, one of the concepts I’ve discussed most with readers is the truth and fiction of the popular personal development saying: Get just one percent better every day.
As a mindset, Steve and I couldn’t agree more. It echoes much of what we write and coach toward. Consistency over intensity. Progress over perfection. You don’t need to hit home runs; you just need to show up and put the ball in play, over and over again.
The problem, though, is that people can’t help but take “get just one percent better every day” at least somewhat literally. That’s because when you are relatively new to an activity, you often actually do get one percent better every day (if not more). Not only are you showing up with a powerful mindset of consistency, but you are getting a very concrete and tangible reward for your effort—you are making visible progress, you are getting a little better every day.
This sort of visible progress is an enormous wellspring of motivation that keeps you coming back. Anyone who has ever learned an instrument, started running, undergone weight training, taken pottery classes, picked up writing, or begun any new craft knows this to be true. Pairing the mindset of “one percent better every day” with the reality of one percent better every day is extremely powerful.
But then at some point, usually anywhere from one to four years in, you stop getting one percent better every day. You are no longer making observable gains on a timeline where you can trace rewards to effort. Unsurprisingly, this is when many people quit. The honeymoon period is over.
Herein lies the importance of an enormous shift in motivation. You can no longer rely on incremental gains to bring you back into the gym, studio, or classroom. You require a new set of intrinsic rewards: qualities like curiosity, discipline, joy, community, and commitment.
I can’t overstate it enough. This is something so many coaches, athletes, teachers, and students mess up. There is nothing wrong with relying on early progress to draw yourself (or those you coach or teach) in. But, simultaneously, you need to be building other sources of stick-to-itiveness. Because once the one percent better gains stop, those other sources are everything.
A great example is the world champion powerlifter, Layne Norton. When he first started training, he fell in love with the sport precisely because he got one percent better every day. Training built Norton’s confidence. It showed him the power of agency. There was a tight reward cycle: Norton exerted effort, and thus he could add weight to the bar. The incremental progress was addictive for all the right reasons.
Fast forward to later in his career: it took Norton eight years to increase his deadlift from 716 to 723 pounds. In case you are wondering, that means Norton got about 0.0003% better every day. During that span, he endured multi-year periods of zero observable progress, and on many occasions, actually regressed.
When I asked Norton how his motivation has shifted throughout his career, he told me it became more about discipline (just show up), curiosity (what he could learn about himself and his relationship to powerlifting), and satisfaction gained from the process (the win wasn’t getting one percent better, the win was doing the work itself).
There are myriad ways to stay on the path of mastery once the initial gains wear off. But the first step, and the one so many people overlook, is expecting this shift in motivation and reward to occur. The most interesting and deepest learnings, joys, and satisfactions come once you’ve stopped getting one percent better every day.
So while you can use the early gains as rocket fuel to maintain consistency and motivation, you’ve also got to lay the groundwork for more sustainable sources of drive that you’ll need later on. You’ve got to highlight not just the external rewards but the internal ones too. (To go deeper, check out our new book, which details 15 factors of excellence.) Otherwise, you’ll get caught in a pattern of dabbling for a year or two and then quitting and moving on.
It’s also worth remembering that most people quit most things once they stop getting one percent better every day. Simply by sticking around, you are already separating yourself from the pack. Use those early gains. Keep the mindset of one percent better every day, but realize the reality becomes a bit different over time, and that’s actually a good thing: it means you’re becoming advanced at whatever it is you do.
— Brad and Steve
