People are always saying self-improvement, productivity, and life-long learning are the ways to be successful; quoting tons of speeches from billionaires and entrepreneurs and feeling like it is easy to achieve. Frankly, it sounds a bit cliché, but have you ever thought about “HOW”? Did you know that it can be executed scientifically?
Unlike the ambition of salesperson chasing sales targets, keeping their record always at a new high, we should focus more on our personality and follow our own pace. Instead of setting a higher goal, we would rather concentrate on improving ourselves a tiny little bit every day comfortably by using the 1% principle.
1.01365 = 37.8
A slight change makes a big difference. Every day improves ourselves by 1% towards becoming the person that we desire to be, it would be a compound effect in a long run. In the contrast, if we avoid getting improvement, the memory of our knowledge will fade out over time, and our old skills and techniques will be replaced. Without learning, we are stepping back, which may cause 1% worse each day.
Nothing can beat people who keep hard-working patiently. It is a conceptual idea that helps us to be motivated and keep it consistent. In short, the result may not be seen obviously, or even have to face lots of failures and difficulties. But by the time you insist, your knowledge will be improved exponentially and a dramatic result will be acquired in long run.
Growth mindset
To further elaborate, it is more important to have a growth mindset, which is also known as a can-do spirit. People with a growth mindset would treat failure as an opportunity and find ways and methods to solve the problem. Unlike a fixed mindset, people would see failure as hopeless or even give up very easily.
Self-improvement is an ongoing journey. To explain scientifically and psychologically, the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear has explained the ways how to reduce distraction, how to well use dopamine, and how to deal with procrastination by using different principles, such as the 2-min rule.
To take a quick look, the youtube channel Escaping Ordinary (B.C Marx) has made an animated video to portray the book for visual illustration.
Escaping Ordinary (B.C Marx)
To implement, you may have a wide range of areas that you desire to improve, it is better to write it all down to have a full picture. For example, to improve mental health by doing meditation regularly, building up a new hobby, or learning a new language; sometimes goals can be as tiny as reading a useful quote, or even just learning a new word. No matter how small the improvement is, keep the chain continued to motivate ourselves to absorb new information and to be a better version of ourselves. Your mentality is key to defining your future.