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The Mathematical Absurdity of 1% Improvement
James Clear popularized the idea of one percent improvement in his book Atomic Habits. It’s a concept that makes a lot of sense when you start at ground zero.
Take pushups, for example. Suppose on January 1st, you do just 1 pushup. A one percent daily improvement means that don’t have to successfully complete 2 consecutive pushups until day 71 (March 12th). As the numbers grow larger, the progress happens more quickly.
Let’s say you’re strong and can already do 25 pushups at once. If you start with 25 on January and get 1% better each day, you’ll top out at 935 pushups on December 31st. If you start with 50 then you’ll hit almost 1,900 pushups. If you’re trying to beat Charles Servizio’s 46,001-pushups-in-24-hours record, you’re going to have to start with 1,250 pushups on January 1st. Don’t worry though, you only have to improve 1% every day. By December 31st, you’ll beat Mr. Servizio’s record by a cool 500 pushups. No problem, right?
It’s should be obvious that Mr. Clear isn’t talking (for the most part) about an actual, quantifiable 1% improvement in most of our activities. World-class athletes can make incremental improvements, but the world’s…