James Clear

We need to scale things down into things.

pieces that we can actually work on and execute.

So the way that I think about it is when making plans, think big.

When making progress, think small.

And getting 1% better each day is a way to encourage that.

The story that I like to tell, and this is something that I kind of kick Atomic Habits off with, is the story of the British cycling team.

And for many years, British cycling was very mediocre.

They had never won a Tour de France, which is the premier race in cycling.

They had won a single gold medal over like a hundred year span.

And they brought this new performance coach in named Dave Brailsford.

And he had this concept that he called the aggregation of marginal gains, the aggregation of marginal gains.

And the way that he described it was the 1% improvement in nearly everything that we do related to cycling.

So they started looking at a bunch of things you would expect a cycling team to focus on.

Like they put slightly lighter tires on the bike, or they designed like an ergonomic seat for the riders.

They had the riders wear a little feedback sensor, little chip to see how each individual responded to training.

Then they would adjust the practice schedule.

But then they started doing like these little 1% changes, these small improvements that nobody else was really thinking about.

Like they hired a surgeon to come in and teach the riders how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting the flu.

They have this big trailer, like a semi trailer that carries a lot of bikes in it to major events.

And they painted the inside of that truck trailer white so that they could spot little bits of dirt and dust that might get in the gears and degrade the performance of the bikes.