Incremental Steps Is All You Need!
We all start with a new goal, we keep a deadline to achieve the same, initially we are really thrilled to achieve the goal and we put in maximum hours to achieve the goal, but as time passes we give up. Now this goal can be anything, it can be a new habit that you want to build, it can be a new skill that you want to learn, it can be an exam that you want to clear, it can be a job that you want to crack.
Why is it that our motivation to pursue the goal does not stay with us, Why is it that our motivation dies down for something that we wanted to do? There are a few reasons like —
- The goal does not look attractive enough anymore — Initially when you wanted to pursue the goal and started working towards it, the attractiveness level of the goal was very high say a 100%. As you start to pursue the goal you now understand the in and out of the things you need to pursue the goal, you might not be comfortable to adapt to these “things”. Thus you end your pursuit.
- Procrastination — This is one of the major problems, a lot of us including me give up on our goals for this very reason. But, you see procrastination does not make the goal unattractive for us. The goal is still attractive but we fail to work towards it.
The idea that I am sharing is available in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is a great book to read, the book presents a lot of great ideas to form habits easily and also follow these habits.
Incremental steps is all you need! 📈
This is graph is from the book Atomic Habits. Now in the book, for self improvement, James Clear suggests something really simple and that is 1% improvement each day.
You see when we start working towards our goal, our motivation to pursue that goal is really high, we follow the goal and are really enthusiastic about the same. But, as time passes our motivation dies down we are not enthusiastic about the goal any more it can be because we find the goal difficult now or are really lazy to continue pursue it.
Now in the book James Clear suggests something really really simple and that is 1% improvement each day. James suggests that we only need to put in 1% effort each day and we just keep growing. We don’t need to put in a lot just 1% and that’s it, now we are in touch with the goal.
Be One With your Goal
This is really important along with the 1% rule. We need to be one with our goals, we need to make it our identity.
For instance, you want to loose say x kgs of weight by the end of the year, now follow the rule, that is 1% each day, but now what happens is that we are now making our goal our identity meaning you are telling your mind that, “hey I am someone who leads a healthy life style”. You cast these “votes” towards your goal and your mind starts to identify you as the person you want to be.
Now again, say you want to read a 100 books by the end of the year, again as per rule you need to put 1% effort each day, doing this, your mind will start to identify you as someone who is a reader, someone who loves and adores literature.
You cast these “votes” in your mind for the personality that you want to become and by doing this small action of 1% improvement you achieve to be one with you goal.
Trivia ✨
I wish to share a small idea from software engineering to show you how important it is to take really small steps.
You see machine learning, is one of the biggest trends in software engineering, you must be reading this article because it was recommend to you or you must be my friend 😂. There is an algorithm called Gradient Descent which is really the heart of all machine learning algorithms.
Let’s not go in to the details, but what gradient descent does is, it finds a point on a graph/function where the value of the function is the lowest.
Now for gradient descent there is some thing called as learning rate which defines how fast or the step size that it will take for the algorithm to find the lowest value. Now on the left is the output when the step size is really small and the blue dotted line traces the small steps taken by gradient descent and the right figure show the output when the step size is really large and the blue lines trace the steps taken by the algorithm. You see, the left line managed to reach the lowest point on the graph, but the right most graph failed to do so, instead it just kept bouncing on the graph. So now I hope you understand the importance of small incremental steps that will surely lead you towards your goals.
Finally
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you learned something. Just connect to the internet and Start Learning😃! Happy Learning😎!
