This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here's What Happened

This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here's What Happened

In 2010, Dave Brailsford faced a tough job.

No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, but as the new General Manager and Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain's professional cycling team), that's what Brailsford was asked to do.

His approach was simple.

Brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the "aggregation of marginal gains." He explained it as the "1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do." His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.

They started by optimizing the things you might expect: the nutrition of riders, their weekly training program, the ergonomics of the bike seat, and the weight of the tires. 

But Brailsford and his team didn't stop there. They searched for 1 percent improvements in tiny areas that were overlooked by almost everyone else: discovering the pillow that offered the best sleep and taking it with them to hotels, testing for the most effective type of massage gel, and teaching riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid infection. They searched for 1 percent improvements everywhere.

Brailsford believed that if they could successfully execute this strategy, then Team Sky would be in a position to win the Tour de France in five years time.

He was wrong. They won it in three years.

In 2012, Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. That same year, Brailsford coached the British cycling team at the 2012 Olympic Games and dominated the competition by winning 70 percent of the gold medals available.

In 2013, Team Sky repeated their feat by winning the Tour de France again, this time with rider Chris Froome. Many have referred to the British cycling feats in the Olympics and the Tour de France over the past 10 years as the most successful run in modern cycling history.

And now for the important question: what can we learn from Brailsford's approach?

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

It's so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making better decisions on a daily basis.

Almost every habit that you have -- good or bad -- is the result of many small decisions over time. 

And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change.

So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent isn't notable (and sometimes it isn't even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run.

And from what I can tell, this pattern works the same way in reverse. (An aggregation of marginal losses, in other words.) If you find yourself stuck with bad habits or poor results, it's usually not because something happened overnight. It's the sum of many small choices -- a 1 percent decline here and there -- that eventually leads to a problem.

 

Inspiration for this image came from a graphic in The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse. (In other words, it won't impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don't. This is why small choices ("I'll take a burger and fries") don't make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term.

On a related note, this is why I love setting a schedule for important things, planning for failure, and using the "never miss twice" rule. I know that it's not a big deal if I make a mistake or slip up on a habit every now and then. It's the compound effect of never getting back on track that causes problems. By setting a schedule to never miss twice, you can prevent simple errors from snowballing out of control.

The Bottom Line

Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

—Jim Rohn

You probably won't find yourself in the Tour de France anytime soon, but the concept of aggregating marginal gains can be useful all the same.

Most people love to talk about success (and life in general) as an event. We talk about losing 50 pounds or building a successful business or winning the Tour de France as if they are events. But the truth is that most of the significant things in life aren't stand-alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we chose to do things 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. Aggregating these marginal gains makes a difference.

There is power in small wins and slow gains. This is why average speed yields above average results. This is why the system is greater than the goal. This is why mastering your habits is more important than achieving a certain outcome.

Where are the 1 percent improvements in your life?

Three cheers for Indian agriculture!!!

Three cheers for Indian agriculture!

Ashok Gulati Posted online: Wednesday, Jan 01, 2014 at 0000 hrs

The year 2013 is something to cheer about the performance of Indian agriculture. Given the good rainfall, agricultural GDP in the 2013-14 agri-year (July-June) is likely to grow between 5.1% and 5.7%, almost three times higher than last year. New records in production and trade are being achieved. Take these: Horticultural production is likely to touch 269 million tonnes (mt) and perhaps for the first time going to surpass the foodgrain production (of 260 mt or so) in 2013-14. Milk production is likely to scale a new peak of 139 mt, and this commodity will be the biggest agri-commodity in terms of value, even bigger than rice or wheat. Cotton is likely to touch 37 million bales, and so on.

On the agri-trade front, our exports in 2012-13 were $41 billion against agri-imports of $20 billion, giving a net trade surplus of $21 billion. This feat is going to be repeated this year too. India is the largest exporter of rice, guar gum meal, beef (buffalo meat) and the second-largest exporter of cotton. India exported 22 mt of cereals, never done before in its history of more than 3,000 years! India’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’, as measured by the Balassa Index, is 1.6 against that of manufacturing at 0.98, indicating clearly that Indian agriculture is much more competitive globally than our manufacturing sector.

Behind the success of each of these commodities, in production and/or trade, is a fascinating story, the story of well-designed policies, or processes, or investments, or technology, but above all, the entrepreneurial spirit of our farmers. Let me narrate just three stories here, which have had a large impact on our agriculture and benefiting millions of farmers, consumers and the country at large. The idea is to distil lessons for future policy direction so that we can scale these up, with much larger gains.

First, let us talk about milk. In 1951, when the US was producing 53 mt of milk, India’s milk production was just 17 mt. In 2013-14, US milk production is likely to be around 91 mt and India at 139 mt! Project this for the next 10 years and see its implications. And so far, most of this is done by small farmers with an average herd size of about four cows and/or buffaloes. This is an outstanding example of inclusive growth, which the developing world with smallholders needs to emulate.

Verghese Kurien and his team were the people behind this but the political credit of this goes to Lal Bahadur Shastri, who spent a night (October 31, 1964) in a village in Anand talking to farmers till 2 am and decided the next day to scale up activities of AMUL by setting up the National Dairy Development Board in 1965, which later on launched Operation Flood to make India self-sufficient in milk. Shastri also gave us the slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’. But so far, not more than 20% of this milk is being processed through the organised sector. Lesson: We need massive scaling up of processing activities, be it by cooperatives or domestic or international private players to reap the full benefits of this ‘white revolution’ and take it to its next stage.

Second, Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended the slogan of ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ to include ‘Jai Vigyan’. The cotton story reveals the power of science (vigyan). In 2002-03, as per central government statistics, India produced only 8.6 million bales (Cotton Advisory Board estimates were somewhat higher) of cotton. This is likely to cross 37 million bales in 2013-14, giving an annual export of around 10 million bales valued around Rs 20,000 crore. All this was made feasible through Bt cotton (genetically modified), which came through the research of a big multinational seed company and was launched in India through its Indian partner. Today, more than 90% of cotton area is under Bt cotton varieties. Yet there are apprehensions about GM technology in policy circles and some NGOs, and the government has dithered on the Bt brinjal case. Lesson: While due transparency in the approval process is necessary, it needs to be done more expeditiously. Bold moves in biotechnology are necessary, from investments to linkages with private sector players and its proper extension to farmers, if we have to produce enough food, feed and fibre for a large and increasing population.

Third, let us talk about Pusa basmati. It has raised India’s basmati exports from less than 1 mt to about 3.8 mt in 2013. The annual additional benefit from this is anywhere from Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. It was invented in the public sector through research under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, with meagre resources. Just one good piece of research, by VP Singh and his team, gave 100 times more returns on investment than India did on all varieties of rice for several years. Lesson: Investments in agri-R&D have very high pay-offs. We need to significantly scale up our investments, and incentivise our scientists to convert their research into economic benefit for the country.

There are several other stories in Indian agriculture to be proud of. Yet, at times, we feel pessimistic whenever there is severe drought, or farmers commit suicide, or farmers agitate for better prices, and so on. Lesson: The agricultural glass is more than half full, and it can be filled even more if we make our agri-policies farmer-centric. It is not just the tonnage that is important, the smile on the faces of farming families is equally important. Only a happy family can give the best to the nation and make us all feel proud.

Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives -- getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.

What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What’s the difference between goals and systems?

• If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
• If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
• If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
• If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I’ve written this year. (You can see them all here.) In the last 12 months, I’ve written over 115,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have basically written two books this year.

All of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn’t measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count goal for any particular article. I never said, “I want to write two books this year.”

What I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed the same (or perhaps better) results.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Each Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week provides a feedback loop that tells me if I’m doing things right. When that number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.

Fall In Love With Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

In fact, I think I’m going to officially declare 2014 the “Year of the Sloth” so that everyone will be forced to slow down and make consistent, methodical progress rather than chasing sexy goals for a few weeks and then flaming out.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.