Getting One Percent Better Every Day

As Charles Schulz once said, “Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.” This brilliant observation sums up so much of the human condition. We’re all equipped with potential, yet most of us coast along, our metaphorical legs doing the bare minimum while we let life roll downhill. Of course, we do eventually hit that inevitable steep incline, of course, and suddenly realize, “Oh, right, there are more gears. I just never bothered to use them.” But by that point, you’re too out of breath to care, so you start walking instead, gasping, “Well, at least I tried.”

Life is too short to live as if we have all the time in the world. In fact, the world itself doesn’t even have all the time in the world. Yet, I’d be a hypocrite if I claimed I live every day like it’s my last. Some days, my greatest accomplishment is not throwing my phone out the window after watching a particularly bad take from yet another YouTube content creator. Some days, getting out of bed feels like a noble triumph worthy of its own Netflix documentary.

Apparently, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all supposed to be striving towards something greater. It’s something we often call “self-improvement.” But there is actually one aspect of self-improvement, a coping mechanism that can actually end up being a productive affirmation.

As the self-help crowd likes to call it, I’ve made it a goal to “be one percent better every day.” It sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? Anyone can do one measly percent. I can do that, I thought to myself, the same way I convince myself I can eat just one potato chip or stop scrolling Instagram after just five minutes. (I say that to myself every five minutes.) Still, I was seduced by the promise of this manageable daily growth.

I didn’t come to this life-changing philosophy entirely on my own, though. I was at an impasse in my marketing career. That’s a polite way of saying I was stuck in the quicksand of corporate mediocrity, unsure whether to pull myself out or simply sink in with grace. Then, like some divine algorithm reading my deepest insecurities, I came across advice that changed my life.

James Altucher, an author and entrepreneurial wild card, preached that the best safety net for an uncertain future is simple: improve yourself by just one percent every day. Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally—just pick something and get one percent better. I was intrigued. I’m no math genius (okay, I’m slightly exaggerating my incompetence here), but I could understand his basic point. If I improved by one percent each day, that would stack up to a 365 percent increase over a year, right? That tracks, if you assume there are no backslides. It’s also based on the assumption that life doesn’t occasionally smack you in the face and knock you back a few dozen percent just for fun.

Mathematics aside, I liked the idea—especially the way Altucher described self-improvement as being like compound interest. The idea of incremental improvements adding up like a well-tracked retirement account made me feel oddly productive just thinking about it. “Progress with yourself,” he says, “is just like cumulative interest, and it should be treated as such.” I remember nodding along enthusiastically the first time I heard this. Yes, I thought, I’m an investment—a long-term asset, slowly appreciating in value. But then I paused to reconsider—am I more like a savings bond with nearly guaranteed future earning, or am I more akin to a lottery ticket someone lost down the back of a couch?

The one-percent-better philosophy really took hold of me during one of those late-night insomnia sessions we all have. It’s one of those times you stare into the abyss of your own inadequacies and realize that despite all your flailing attempts at greatness, you’re still only human. In this case, it was during one of the worst health crises this world’s ever seen—you know the one.

There I was in the pitch black of night, staring at my life like a messy spreadsheet, realizing that nothing was adding up the way I thought it should. It finally hit me: I didn’t need to fix everything all at once. I didn’t need to achieve perfection by tomorrow afternoon. I just needed to make small, barely perceptible steps in the right direction. Tiny victories and minuscule adjustments needed to be my next steps.

Of course, the problem with this philosophy is that, while it sounds incredibly reasonable, it leaves a lot of wiggle room for laziness. On some days, my “one percent” might be something like drinking a glass of water. “Hydration!” I cheer to myself, as if I’ve just solved the energy crisis. Other days, the bar for improvement is laughably low: “Well, at least I didn’t get into a shouting match with the automated customer service robot.” That’s progress, right?

Still, even these small steps of being a better human start to add up in ways I didn’t expect. After all, when you start looking for ways to improve—even just a smidgen—you begin to see opportunities everywhere. Maybe you’re not destined to become a world-class athlete or a virtuoso pianist, but you can take a minute to stretch in the morning and practice some scales on your long-forgotten keyboard. Maybe you’ll never become a spiritual guru by meditating once a month, but you can take a few deep breaths when you’re stuck in traffic and not mentally strangle the driver who cut you off. There are small victories to be found, and the secret sauce is that little dopamine hit you get when you realize you’ve done something better than you did yesterday—even if it’s just not screaming at your inbox.

So as unpredictable and unfair as life may be, it doesn’t need us to shift into all our gears at once. You don’t need to master every aspect of life in a single leap. But making the conscious decision to improve by one percent each day is less about racing to the finish line and more about realizing that, despite all our imperfections, we’re still moving forward—even if it’s in first gear.

Even on the days where I’ve really got nothing in the tank, I can always remind myself that by simply waking up, I’ve technically made 100 percent progress from being asleep. Turns out, the bar for improvement is a lot lower than we think. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

~ Amelia Desertsong