How getting just 1% better can help you build sticky habits for life: The Marginal Gains Philosophy
Have you ever wished you could change or improve on an aspect of your life, but found yourself forgetting about it or failing at it after a week or two?
Many of us have felt the same way, especially when new year’s resolutions come around. At least 14% of eager gym-goers will have dropped their memberships within the first month of signing up [1]. So how are we supposed to find the motivation to keep going when we can’t force ourselves to stick to a new routine, even when it’s good for us?
The answer lies in something known as the marginal gains philosophy, a method of slowly building up sticky habits 1% at a time.
What Is The Marginal Gains Philosophy?
The marginal gains philosophy is centered around breaking down a goal into its smaller components and then improving on each one by a small percentage (1%). In doing this, when we take all the improvements and put them together, we end up with significant progress towards our end goal.
When we think small and adopt a strategy of continuous improvement, it is easier to focus on the progression we are making towards building a habit, rather than the achievement of the habit itself.
Continuous improvement allows us to compound on our smaller successes.
What Are The 3 Pillars of Marginal Gains?
The marginal gains philosophy is built on 3 “podium principles” from when Sir David John Brailsford was head of the British Olympic Cycling team.
Strategy. This involves the analysis of goals or events and taking the time to understand what is needed to succeed.
Human Performance. This looks at the physical and mental limits of the individual trying to achieve said goal.
Continuous Improvement. This includes brainstorming and breaking down each goal into its core components so that the individual can work on improving these with small progression.
In using these 3 podium principles, Sir David John Brailsford took a team that had a single gold medal for 76 years, into a team that won 8/10 gold medals during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and repeated this during the London Olympics in 2012 [2]. He replicated this success when he became the manager of Team Sky in 2010, the new British-based professional cycling team. He oversaw victories in 2012, 2013, 2015-2018 Tours de France [3].
How Does This Relate to Forming Sticky Habits?
A 1% improvement over time can help us build habits that stick because it takes large, daunting goals and breaks them into easily manageable chunks.
In breaking the habit down into chunks, we can identify the “why” behind our motivation to form the habit, we can define the habit itself, and we can more easily integrate the smaller steps into our schedule. As a result, we can use “habit chaining” or “habit stacking” to ease into the new behavior; using reminder cues such as another habit to keep ourselves on track.
Example of the 1% Factor in Building a Sticky Habit
Let’s say we have the goal of learning to play the drums. To achieve this goal through the marginal gains philosophy, we need to break it down into these smaller core elements, such as:
The drum kit - how it works and how it sounds.
The player - getting used to the movements required to play.
The music - rhythm, tempo, and the nuances of playing alone or with others.
The theory - reading sheet music.
These core elements make up the overall skill of playing the drums. Forming the sticky habit comes from improving small bits of each of these elements over a long period.
The easiest way to do this is to use a productivity tool like Sankalp, which allows us to set up a personalized logging, reminder, and tracking system for each step of the way. The tool we use needs to be flexible so that we can have multiple schedules per habit, have integrated reminders, both location-based and time-based, and have percentage-based goal tracking for all kinds of metrics.
Illustration of Sankalp's app
Advocates of Marginal Gains Philosophy
Albert Einstein was once asked what mankind's greatest invention was, he replied: "Compound Interest." There is even one claim that Einstein called compound interest the "8th Wonder of the World."
Benjamin Franklin described it as "Money makes money. And the money that money makes, makes money." Read about his experiment here.
Pat Riley, three times NBA coach of the year, said "If you are not getting better, you are getting worse."
Darren Hardy, the author of the New York bestseller "The Compound Effect", famously said, "The accomplishment of any goal is the progressive accumulation or compound effect, of small steps taken consistently over time."
James Clear, the author of "Atomic Habits" also advocates the power of marginal gains and said, "If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done."
Wrapping It Up
When it comes to forming sticky habits, it’s never a good idea to just jump in full-on and go for gold. It is better to understand the foundational components that build up to our goal as this will become the basis upon which our habit will form. By breaking down our goals into their most basic aspects, not only will we make it easier for ourselves to conquer them one at a time, but we're also far more likely to make progress that we can see, track, and appreciate.