The individuals and businesses that consistently do the right things, more consistently over time, gain a slight edge over their competition and who they were yesterday.

That's the insight from two of my favorite books on habit formation and continual improvement: James Clear's Atomic Habits and Jeff Olson's Slight Edge.

The "right things"—a.k.a those 1% improvements—aren't ground-breaking or noticeable actions.

And that's the paradox.

If they're easy to do...

They're easy not to do.

In our culture of "silver-bullet solutions", we're primed to find earth-shattering, extraordinary shortcuts or hacks for the results we want in life.

But as the late and great motivational speaker Jim Rohn shared:

"To be successful, you don't need to do extraordinary things. You just need to do ordinary things extraordinarily well."

— Jim Rohn

Example: Brushing your teeth 🪥🦷

Brushing and flossing your teeth twice daily takes ~5 minutes.

Easy to do.

Easy not to do.

And even if you skip it once, there won't be an immediate or noticeable difference in your dental hygiene.

But over a long enough time horizon, that can be the difference between your next dental appointment being:

✅ A positive, reassuring experience with just a few minor plaque clean-ups and a thumbs-up from your dentist; or

❌ Filled with anxiety and an expensive bill due to your dentist removing an extensive plaque build-up.

The impact of your everyday choices has little to no immediate impact, but their individual weight is compounded over time.

And in case you think 1% doesn't amount to much, think again:

So where to from here?

Let's harness the power of getting 1% Better Every Day in an area of your life that you've been struggling with.

Pick one area of your life and focus on changing 1 behaviour you can track daily for the next 12 months.

🤔 Need some inspo?

Here are some 1% habits I've previously focused on and built into my everyday improvements.

❤️ Relationships — At the end of every interaction with a loved one, say the words "I appreciate you" or "I love you" before you hang up the phone or walk away from the interaction

🥗 Health — Make it a priority to always finish the salad on your plate (even if you're too full to finish the rest of the plate) #GetYourGreens

💰 Wealth — Read 10 pages of a book on personal finance, wealth and/or entrepreneurship each day. Note: You can read more if you like, but your bare minimum is 10 pages—no less.

Your accountability partner

Research has proven that you're 6.5 times more likely to reach a goal when you have an accountability partner to declare and share it with (ASTD, 2015).

So when you've decided on your area of focus for 1% improvements, reply back with your commitment statement.

Feel free to copy and paste this template:

"Hey Mamba, it's [your name] here.

I'm committing to [insert your 1% habit] every day for the next 12 months.

Keep me accountable!"

And remember—you'll have days where you fall off.

Days where you don't do it.

That's normal.

You're a human.

Don't beat yourself up.

What counts is that you own it and make the conscious decision to get back on track the following day.

You've. Got. This 🤙🏽

Mamba