1311: [Part 2] The Incredible Power of the 1% Margin for Improvement by Paula Pant of Afford Anything on Growth Mindset

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Happy Sunday, welcome to the old podcast as the OLD podcast, Optimal Living Daily, where I read to you, like a big ongoing audiobook from many different authors for free. Today being a continuation from yesterday, so I recommend listening to yesterday's episode first. And I did a book raffle on Instagram somewhat recently, another one's coming soon, so if you're not following us there now's a good time, you can find us at old podcast, but for now let's get right to Part 2 and start optimizing your life. The incredible power of the 1% margin for improvement Part 2 by Paula Pan to affordanything.com 1% across life.

I first learned the marginal gains idea when Senn Habits author Leo Babouta suggested developing new habits through incremental gains. Want to start jogging? Jog for 1 minute per day, he recommended. Guess it'll feel silly to lace up your running shoes, break into a 1 minute jog and stop.

That seems so ridiculous most people laugh, he says, but this helps you develop the habit of jogging every day. Starting is the hardest part, you can adjust the amount later. Leo applies this concept to any type of behavior change. Want to start flossing?

Floss 1 tooth. Meditation? 1 or 2 minutes. Writing?

1 sentence. Pushups? Let me get the idea. 1 sentence.

I realized that if I run for 1 minute a day and increase this by an additional minute every 3 days, I'll be completing 1 hour runs within 6 months. This concept was the inspiration for the 1% challenge. 1% learning. I recently stumbled across this concept again while researching effective teaching techniques.

As you know, I'm creating a real estate investing course. One of my biggest priorities is designing the material in a way that produces results rather than just presents information. In service of that goal, I've been spending a lot of time studying the learning process, learning how humans learn. Among other concepts, I've been reading about how to ask a mix of clarifying, probing and meeting questions, offer unobtrusive feedback, seek out confusing parts, like who's feeling stuck, what's preventing forward momentum, and foster a sense of competence, independence, and belonging.

This is called the 3A's Agency Autonomy and Affiliation. Sounds great, but this is vague and unspecific. How do I apply these ideas into the material? The answer?

Marginal gains. Can I rephrase one question? Can I create one more cliffhanger within the talk? Can I ask students to articulate one thing they expect to achieve at the end of each lesson?

If I make one-week or improvement every day within 4 months, I'll have made more than 100 enhancements. That's the difference between good and great. I'm blown away by how much small change is that up over time. 1% in the big picture.

There's one critical clarification I want to make about Marginal gains theory. Some people interpret this as the theory of sweating the small stuff, worry about minutia, tweak around the fringes. This seems to contradict a different line of thinking that you should ruthlessly prioritize focusing only on the big wins. Your time and energy is limited, so don't waste it chasing pennies, don't clip coupons or make your own laundry soap when you could instead spend your precious time focusing on larger gains.

How can you possibly pursue marginal gains and limit your focus to big wins? Don't these two ideas live in opposition? That's a fantastic question. Since I'm a nerd, I decided to dig deep to find the answer.

Clarity came from a Brailsford interview. Interestingly, when we moved from the track to the Tour de France, we didn't get it right at all. Our first few races were well below expectation. We took an honest look and realized that we had focused on the P's, not the steak.

We tried so hard with all the bells and whistles of marginal gains that our focus was too much on the periphery and not on the core. You have to identify the critical success factors and ensure they are in place, and then focus your improvements around them. That was a harsh lesson, and quote, boom, that says it all. The theory of ruthless prioritization, which states that our mental bandwidth is limited so focus only on the few things that matter, provides a target.

It tells us where to aim our arrow. The theory of marginal gains tells us how to hit that target. It's the forward trajectory of that arrow as it soared through the air one inch at a time. Prioritization is the what?

Marginal gains is the how. I'll use myself as an example, there's no shortage of opportunities to optimize areas of my life. I could dive into the travel hacking scene, learn another language, take up a musical instrument, start lifting weights, become a better cook, spend more time connecting with old friends, ban my consulting business and bring on more clients, grow the afford anything movement, build my rental property portfolio. The problem is that you and I can do anything, but not everything, just as we can afford anything, but not everything.

Through ruthless prioritization, I chose a few goals that are at the core of my life's vision. Then within the goals that I chose, I created a daily habit of marginal gains, 1% gains in your life. Maybe you're trying to earn side income, start investing, or grow the gap between your earnings and expenses. Maybe you're wrestling with a career decision, or maybe you're trying to get healthier.

There are a million goals you could reach, but there are probably only a small few that actually deserve your care and attention. Choose those goals wisely, ruthlessly, deliberately. Once you've chosen your targets, make incremental progress a daily habit, send one email to potential client daily, read one article per day about investing, save 1% more money than you did last month, 1% improvements, create champions over time. You just listened to part 2 of the post titled The Incredible Power of the 1% Margin 4 Improvement by Paula Pan to affordanything.com.

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It's just $199. And head to superpower.com and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership. So yesterday I mentioned the exercise example of how I'm using this in my own life, and then today she pretty much said the exact same thing, and how you can run for just one minute a day. We can all do that.

If you do it consistently, it will turn into a habit, and the length will change from one minute to whatever you want it to be, if it doesn't for a while, that's still an improvement. And for me, with focusing on specific areas, it's also something I'm doing, mine are learning a language and exercise outside of regular work related activities, those are the two areas I'm trying to grow, and I'm striving to do a little bit every day. So for language learning, I'm on something like day 130, it's definitely working, so consider it. Like she said, the hardest part is getting started, so if you can tell yourself it's only one minute, 60 seconds, and that gets you to start, that'll be huge, and then stop after that one minute.

Use the timer if you have to, but then make sure you do it again tomorrow. So let me know how it goes for you, that'll do it for today and this weekend, I'll be back tomorrow for minimalist Monday, so I'll see you there, where your optimal life awaits.