“Great things are not done by
impulse but by a series of small things brought together.”—Vincent Van Gogh
Everything
matters!
Yes,
everything does matter. Though certain things may matter more than others, and
we may be able to neglect some things in the short-term, but ultimately,
everything we do or don’t do will add up for an effect in the long-run.
If you think
what you eat doesn’t affect what you can achieve, then I implore you to read
on. You will get a lot out of this article.
What we eat
matters!
How we sleep
matters!
Who we
befriend matters!
What we
think matters!
What we say
matters!
Where we
live matters!
Hope you get
the gist? In a nutshell, everything matters.
This is the
idea that a coach, Dave Brailsford uses to set a remarkable record for the mediocre,
British cycling team. Brailsford believes that if his team can improve a little
in everything they do in connection with their game, they can compete in any competition
and win.
Change a little,
change a lot; this is my way of expressing his philosophy of marginal gains.
Brailsford said:
“If you
broke down everything that goes into riding a bike…and then improve it by one
percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them altogether.”
And the way
I see it, everything that a true champion does is connected to his/her game.
Even things that an amateur would assume don’t matter for the game, a
professional would take them quite seriously.
And especially
to Brailsford, little things matter. He was not only concerned with the key metrics
of a team, such as physiology of riders, showing up for practice and their
performances during training sessions. He was even focused on their sleep
patterns, their beds, their pillows and their personal hygiene, including how
they washed their hands.
You see
that, he was concerned with: ‘how they washed their hands’! No, the coach was
not dealing with minors; he was coaching matured guys.
The skilled
coach took no chances: he left no stone unturned. And as a result of this holistic
approach, his cycling team—Team Sky—went on to win 70% of the gold medals in
2012 Olympics alone.
Such is the
power of making small improvement in everything we do.
Improve Everything You Do—By One
Percent
To bring
about the kind of success that Brailsford accomplished with his team in our own
game and life, we must think less about the prize but more about the process of
getting there. And this process is the concept of accumulation of small gains;
it is how champions are made.
In the words
of the legendary American basketball coach, John Wooden:
"When you improve a little each day, eventually big things
occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a
big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually
a big gain is made. Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small
improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens - and when it
happens, it lasts."
The
interesting tip is: we don’t have to be in sports to benefit from the power of
incremental improvement in the things we do. We can start now by waking up
early, making healthy choices in our nutrition and thinking a little more
positively about the circumstances face, each day.
These small changes
may not appear to mean much in the moment but as time goes by, they will
accumulate to transform us into the best possible version of ourselves later on.
So, if you change
a little in everything that you regularly do, you will eventually experience
the aggregate power of marginal gains in your life.
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