How Small and Simple Actions Separate the Good from the Great
One percent is nothing. James Clear opens Atomic Habits with a radical thought. He says, “Get one percent better each day and after a year you are thirty seven times better than you were. Get one percent worse each day for one year and you have declined to zero.” But how do you even know you got one percent better today? Can you even feel such a small improvement?
That invisibility is exactly the problem. If you cannot feel one percent improvement in your life, you have no reason to believe that small actions matter. That disbelief becomes the mindset that changes how you treat every small decision in your day — and it’s exactly why most people quit on small habits before they ever compound into anything worthwhile.
Consider Erling Haaland and James Rodríguez: two football stars who played for some of the most prestigious football clubs in Europe. Both have led their countries to the World Cup. On paper, their talent and their game opportunities are nearly identical. But after every training session, their coaches asked them to do the same unremarkable thing: thirty minutes of exercise on a stationary bike. Though small, each player responded uniquely to this command.
Rodríguez refused outright when his coach at Bayern Munich asked it of him, and told him plainly that he was a football player, not someone training for the Tour de France. Haaland got on the bike every time. No matter how exhausted he was, he believed that his coach knew best and had a reason to believe that the additional exercise would benefit him.
Thirty minutes on a stationary bike will never win a World Cup. But it exposes the real difference between these two players, and that difference has nothing to do with talent. That gap in performance, which each player repeats for years, mirrors the same one percent Clear describes.
So, what does your stationary bike look like? What is a small action you are avoiding every day in your own work, your family, or your relationships?
At work, your bike might be the one extra sales call, or the quick follow-up email, or refilling the coffee pot the team. In your family, it might be a weekly check-in text or phone call, instead of an annual family reunion. While nobody remembers a single phone call or a random act of courtesy at home or at the office, everybody feels the pattern of consistent small actions — or the painful absence of them.
In your closest relationships, the one percent improvement is almost embarrassingly small. It usually comes down to three sentences: “Thank you,” “I’m sorry,” and “I love you.” None of these sentences will win you anything today, but choosing to audibly appreciate, respect, and care for your loved ones, builds the relationship that most people spend a lifetime trying to construct.
Greatness is rarely the result of one enormous decision. It’s built over time as the result of every small decision you kept making, even on days when nobody was watching and nothing seemed to be at stake. Thinking back to the football players: Erling Haaland never knew which game or which goal the stationary bike rides would finally pay off in. But he kept choosing that small action, day after day. And although he might not have felt those daily one-percent increases, they helped transform him into an incredible athlete. And while we might not be bound for the World Cup like Haaland, choosing small one-percent actions in our own lives can be just as transformative.
