When people think of making changes in their lives, they often think of making of giant move or taking a giant stride that will just suddenly turn things around. They think they can change everything overnight. But what they do not understand is that what makes the difference is not necessarily what you do just once-and-for-all, but what you do over and again. You will agree with me that if you want to build big muscles, you cannot achieve it in a day no matter the size of weight you lift. But if you keep putting in effort and lifting a small amount of weight over a period of time, you will achieve it. This is why you have to pay attention to the compound effect of the little efforts and daily habits.
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You have to understand that the real secret behind success does not lie in doing just one massive thing. Rather it is doing the small things consistently. That is, 1% you put in consistently is actually far better than the 100% you put in just once. You may see 1% as very small, but imagine if you decide to read just one chapter of book everyday for a whole year. By the end of the year, you would have read many books. Saving $10 weekly may look like a little thing, but when you compound it for 1 year, you will discover that you have saved more than $500. You see, at first, it may not look significant, but at the end of the year, you would have gotten something significant.
One of the things that you need to understand about the 1% rule is that it may be invisible at the start. If you eat a healthy plate of salad today, you will not wake up tomorrow morning with a perfect body. If you study a new language for 30 minutes tonight, you will not wake up tomorrow morning speaking it fluently. Because you may not see the immediate result of the action you have taken, a lot of people think that it is insignificant. Some people even give up when they do not see immediate result. What they fail to understand is that you cannot plant a seed in the soil and the seedling will shoot out the same day, but it does not mean that progress is not being made.
I remember when I was learning a particular skill some years back. In the first few days of starting it, it felt like everything was slow and it looked so difficult, and I almost gave up. But I continued. The result did not come out immediately, but I had to keep going. When I started learning it, we were 7 apprentices then. But after a couple of weeks, 2 of them dropped off, maybe because they felt it was a waste of time, or maybe because they were not seeing instant result. However, in about 5 months, I was already beyond average in the skill. By the time we were through with learning, which was about 8 months, we became good at the same skill which once looked like a difficult task at the initial. This shows that you do not judge an entire journey by the first step you take.
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Your daily habits, the little steps you take daily, and your continuous actions may not be felt at the start. However, with consistency, you will see the result. To achieve success, you do not really have to focus so much on the end-point, rather focus on taking the journey one step at a time. If you are climbing a step for example, you may not see the entire staircase, but you will still climb it nonetheless. You take it step by step, and before you know it, you are already in the top floor. In the same way in life, the cumulative of the 1% that is often overlooked may be what will change your life in ways you may not expect.
In order to make the most of the compound effect of 1%, you need to focus more on the system, and not just the goal. This is because goals are about the results you want to achieve, while the systems are about the processes that will get you there. Stop worrying about getting 6 packs, rather focus on the gym process. Do not worry about writing a whole book, rather focus on writing a page per time. With this, you will maximise the benefits of the 1%.
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