Proudly displayed in my office is a picture of my 5’8” son jumping high enough to easily dunk a basketball. I remember the day well that he told me he was going to commit himself to the game of hoop.
He was twelve years old and had just watched the NBA all-star weekend. At first, I was excited, because I knew this meant he was giving up skateboarding, which I felt was riddled with opportunity for serious injury. But then I realized he sucked in basketball. I had coached him in a recreation league the year before and there was zero sign he could be good at hoop.
Each day I would watch him struggle in the driveway shooting. I saw no quit in him so I committed to helping him on his quest. I was at the disadvantage of never playing myself so I purchased books and videos on every aspect of the game.
Being only 5’8”, we both knew his only chance was as a shooter. I discovered a shooting video that taught shooting the old-fashioned way. Really high arc, the kind of shot that is all net. I would stand in front of him, holding a broom as high as I could, and he would shoot over that.
My son was home schooled so he controlled his schedule. He would get up early every day, do his school work, and then practice shooting three to four hours per day, seven days a week.
At first his results were not commensurate with his effort. Some days were good and other days were bad. But eventually it all started to kick in. His shot went from ugly to a thing of beauty. When all was said and done he had become a very accomplished shooter. By the time he was 18 he had an 80% chance of sinking a three-point shot, 90% chance of sinking a free throw, and could dunk the basketball at the height of 5’8”.
The six-year commitment my son made to basketball was hardly a straight line of progress. When he was discouraged I would grab a small pebble in the driveway and explain to him that all he had to do was keep moving the pebble forward ever so slowly. I knew tiny progress, compounded over time, yielded massive results.
This idea of moving the pebble forward is one of the most powerful concepts in human development because success is a process of compounding.
Here are two ways you can begin to implement this for your goals.
The first way is called aggregation of marginal gains.
It was made popular by a British cycling coach. No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France and Dave Brailsford was hired as the coach to change that. Dave’s belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1%, those small gains would add up to significant improvement. Applying this process, it took only a few years before British cyclists started to dominate the sport.
This approach is great, if what you are trying to improve, is already well thought out with only modest room for improvement.
In most areas of life, where there is room for massive improvement, this second way works great. This method is called the 1,000 percent formula.
With this approach, you look at any area in your life you want to improve, and focus on only getting 1/10 of 1% better each day. With this approach, you are improving at a rate of 2% every four weeks. This equates to a 26% improvement each year. Through the power of compounding, in ten years, you are 1,000% better.
One company that applied this process of incremental improvement was McDonalds. Back then food took thirty minutes to prepare, was delivered to the car, and people ate on plates. Through this process of minor improvements McDonald’s figured out how to deliver a hot meal in 60 seconds, have customers come to a window to get the food, and then have them eat out of a bag. These incremental improvements revolutionized the fast food industry.
What areas in your life should you get moving the pebble in the right direction? If you want your life to get better, you must get better, and the aggregation of marginal gains and the 1,000% formula are proven ways to effect massive improvement over time.
