Brian Johnson explains how 1% daily improvement compounds to roughly 37× gains in a year. The concept traces to 19th-century chess master Wilhelm Steinitz's strategy of accumulating small advantages, and applies kaizen-style incremental progress to any area of life.
Questions this video answers
May 16, 2024
Improving 1% each day for one year yields approximately 37 times improvement.
Maurice Ashley's Move by Life Lessons on and off the Chessboard (micro-chapter: 'Improve Every Day').
Theory of the Accumulation of Small Advantages (Accumulation Theory).
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one and our last few plus ones. We've been spending time with chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley and exploring some big ideas from his great new book Move by Life Lessons on and off the Chessboard. Today we're going to continue our exploration. We're going to talk about something called accumulation theory. Let's get straight to work. Maurice tells us, and I quote we we can use the two concepts of accumulation theory and kaizen in our everyday lives. While many people go overboard with strenuous workouts or employ crash diets in the hope of seeing immediate changes to their body, experts note that consistently exercising a little every day, along with gradual shifts to healthy food choices, will result in more lasting results. In finance, get rich quick schemes usually lose out to more patient stocks strategies. He continues by saying in his best selling book Atomic Habits, author James Clear coins his own terms the aggregation of marginal gains to describe these common sense approaches. Improving by 1% isn't particularly notable. Sometimes it isn't even noticeable. But it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here's how the math works out. If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done. And he says accumulation theory and its sister ideas are so obviously powerful that one has to wonder why everyone doesn't follow their core principles of slow but steady improvement. The truth is, we live in an age of instant gratification when building lifelong habits of hard work, patience and consistency don't seem to be as appealing. While we may sometimes be able to see amazing results with flashier methods, the gains that do not come through diligence, sacrifice and determination are often less personally impactful. As Clear writes, it is easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements. And on a daily basis, getting the benefits without the effort can actually be counterproductive in the long run. End quote. Now that's from a great micro chapter called Improve Every Day. The idea of accumulation theory is from an Austrian chess player named Wilhelm Steinitz. Here's a little chess history with a little more practical wisdom. Back in the 1800s, elite competitors played chess super aggressively. Everyone was always going for an all out attack as quickly as possible. It was known as the romantic style. Then Steinitz came along, studied the games and saw that a much more effective strategy would be to systematically build up your forces patiently so that once the final battle was eventually waged, one has had as many pieces and pawns as possible to to overwhelm the enemy's resistance. This was known as the Theory of the Accumulation of Small Advantages, or Accumulation Theory for short. Now Steinitz started playing with this new style. Everyone mocked him. Then he started consistently beating them. Then they all copied him. And that's today's plus one. It's time to shine a spotlight on you. The how can you apply some more of this accumulation theory? Kaizen Aggregation of Marginal Gains Wisdom to your life. Here's to aggregating and compounding these tiny little plus one gains all day, every day, over an extended period of time as we dominate the game of life today.
