What the Hell Is 1% Better Anyways?
Jerry Seinfeld credits his worldly comedic success to “having a cranky nature” and that his “crankiness and irritability” are what drove him forward and pushing for success after all these years in the business.
I don’t have that.
Or maybe I do.
In fact, I think I do, but just never noticed it.
This is not an article about Seinfeld. Or comedy. Or even being cranky.
It’s about asking, “What the fuck does that even mean?” sometimes.
It’s about following little things that irritate you because, behind them, there is valuable information.
It’s Okay to Be Cranky (Sometimes)
Following your irritations is what creates your unique perspective and opinions about the world. Unfortunately, many people either quell their irritations to appease the world and avoid conflict, or they simply avoid them, because, hey, that’s easy.
Maybe the way your partner eats their food irritates you sometimes — there is something deeper in there for you.
Maybe your children irritate you — there is something there worth investigating.
Or maybe everyone is following blindly and that irritates you — there is something there for you to find.
Or maybe something doesn’t make sense to you, yet everyone else seems to be blindly following right along — and that irritates you.
That’s where I found myself recently.
James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits was a smash hit. People loved it.
I did, too.
Kind of.
As I reflected back on it, I realized that, although the information around habits and identity was fascinating, using the actions in the book didn’t land for me.
Well, not entirely.
I left my guitar right next to my desk to make it “obvious”. After a few weeks of playing it on and off, it eventually just blended in with the surroundings.
Even after rewarding myself when I played didn’t last long. I would look at the guitar and find some excuse not to pick it up. Was my reward not rewarding enough?
What Does 1 Percent Better Even Mean?
Or maybe, maybe the problem was this idea of “1 percent better” I had adopted from the book.
But, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the fuck “1 percent better” even meant.
Was it playing one more cord than I did yesterday? Or playing one minute longer? Or not strumming aimlessly for as long as I did yesterday?
Was it writing one more sentence today than I did yesterday? One more paragraph? A page?
Or being nicer to a stranger? One more rep on the bench press? Or one more minute of sunlight? Aaaaaggghhhhh!!!
I had no fucking clue.
The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system…This is a continuous process. There is no finish line. There is no permanent solution.
James Clear. Atomic Habits
Shit! If 1 percent better was the “holy grail” and I needed thousands of them but I couldn’t even find one, let alone drink from it, well, then, I wasn’t ever going to become the world’s next greatest guitarist, now was I?
It irritated me that I couldn’t figure it out.
I actually put “1% Better Every Day” in my social media bio after finishing the book.
A few days later, I removed it.
I realized I had no clue what it even meant.
If someone had asked me to explain what “1% better” even meant and how to do it, I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue of what to tell them.
Define 1 Percent Better (or Don’t)
How can you achieve anything that you can’t define?
If you don’t even know what something like “1 percent better” means, it will quickly wind up in the graveyard of failed habits with the rest of them. And the guitar will be there waiting.
But then the problem hit me: it doesn’t mean anything. It is too broad and expansive and never-ending.
And for some people, like me, that just wasn’t going to work.
I’ve struggled with this idea of “1 percent better” for months.
And then recently, I came across the answer I had been looking for: “Sprints” in The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll.
How are Sprints different from just dividing a goal into phases? Unlike phases, which are not ends in themselves, Sprints are independent, self-contained projects — thus the outcome is, let’s hope, a source of satisfaction, information, and motivation to keep going (or a helpful cue to let this particular goal go).
Carroll, Ryder. The Bullet Journal Method
1 percent better is a “phase”. It has no end. No meaning. It just builds on itself endlessly over time and in some ill-defined direction.
This doesn’t work.
It makes no sense.
Jerry Seinfeld didn’t sit down every single day of his comedic career and write for 2 hours to “get 1 percent better”. He did it to complete his daily sprint of writing for a set period of time because he knew that consistent, defined, daily sprints would make him the best comedian he could be.1 When the sprint was done, he was done.
Stephen King takes the same approach.
I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh. On some days those ten pages come easily; I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older, I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day’s work around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I’m still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.
Stephen King. On Writing
There is no identity shift to “I am a writer,” but instead an identity shift to “I am a person that sits down every day and completes my writing task no matter what.”
This is a profound difference in identity shift from “I am a person who does a thing to get a little better each day” versus “I am a person who completes a thing each day because I am the type of person who starts and finishes tasks and projects.”
These are two very separate approaches.
The Identity Shift With Sprints
You need to change your identity. That is non-negotiable. To do something different you have to be someone different. But the focus moves from getting 1 percent better each day, to instead, being a person who completes short sprints.
I now pick up the guitar daily, not to get 1 percent better, but to complete my 10-minute daily sprint.
If 10 minutes is a stretch, I make it five. The time doesn’t matter. The completion of the task matters.
The percentage that I have improved is irrelevant. What matters is, Did I complete the sprint or not?
I have done this over the past month with writing as well: writing 1,000 words every single day for 30 days. No excuses. No exceptions. All that matters is whether or not the 1,000 words get written.
That’s it.
No arbitrary 1% here. Just a well-defined 30-day sprint.2
Has my identity shifted to “I am a writer?” No.
Has my identity shifted to “I am someone who can start and finish any short and challenging task or project and can now apply this skill to anything I want with success?” Yes.
The best part, especially for those who are curious like me, projects don’t extend endlessly into some unknown future. They end at a specified time: when I hit 1,000 words on my daily word counter and when I reach 30 days. And that allows for play and experimentation. It isn’t some arbitrary goal of “1 percent better”.
Things You Love to Do Will Change
And what we enjoy doing changes over time. If it doesn’t, then you might be a weirdo. I’m joking. Kind of.
Maybe you do love doing the exact same thing forever. And that is great. But most people benefit and grow from experimenting and exploring with new fascinations and curiosities that pop up as they change throughout their lifetime.
A perfect way to do that is to focus on tiny, messy, fun experiments: Sprints.
So one percent better has been gently placed in the trash can because I still have no fucking clue what it means.
It still irritates me when I see people claiming “1% better” will change your life. But I followed that irritation and uncovered something novel that works for me.
And maybe, it’ll work for you.
So be a kid again and don’t be afraid to ask, “Why?” a bit more. “Why do I have to do this?”, “Why do I have to listen to that?”, and my favorite, “Why do I have to follow that rule?”
Living is just practice for life.
Don’t be afraid to do it once in a while.
- https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy ↩︎
- https://gettingresults.com/30-day-sprints/ ↩︎
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