WEEK 18: SMALL IMPROVEMENTS FOR MEANINGFUL RESULTS

Photo Credit: Tour de France by 2014 Stage 1 by Marc

PLANNING (task, scheduling, and WT = DT):  This week I chose to expand out the topics within the current outline that I created and scheduled to complete it onTuesday morning. In addition, I uploaded a 5-Bullet Fridays from Tim Ferris' blog and also an article on "Aggregation of Marginal Gains" from James Clear's blog to turn WT = DT. 

IMPLEMENTATION (strategies used):  This week I completed the task on time and used various strategies to help me. The good thing is that these strategies are now becoming a natural part of what I do. I have listed a brief description of the benefits of each below:

*Schedule Early: By scheduling the task as early in the week as possible you get two benefits. First, you get a sense of accomplishment if you complete the task in the beginning of the week. In addition, it allows you to devout more time to do additional tasks to reach your goals within the same week. Second, it provides more time to complete the task if something comes up during the original set time, which often times do. 

*3-Bucket system of writing: This strategy has really transformed my ability to write more efficiently. It allows me to gather ideas during the week, which in turn makes writing an initial draft on Saturday much easier. Lastly, I have less of an inclination of constantly judging my work and trying to make it perfect by writing and deleting multiple times since I know I am going to edit the draft on Sunday.

*2-Minute Rule: This has taken a while for me to really use this strategy properly, but it is something that really reinforces my discipline and commitment to my weekly tasks. Every time I look at all that I have to do, or do not feel MOTIVATED to complete something for the 52n52, I just focus on what the first 2 minutes of undertaking the tasks requires. Often times, I work more than I thought I would just by completing the first few actions required for the task.

REFLECTIONS (learnings and actions): I planned on expanding the outline topics, but actually changed the task once I started, as I had to stare at three notebooks full of ideas from the past four months that needed to be transferred into Scrivener I dreaded the idea of going back and doing all this, but I implored the 2-Minute rule and just started. In what seemed like a short amount of time, I had finished with the first notebook without even noticing. Naturally I felt pretty good about this and then immediately tackled the second notebook. In addition, by completing a lot of work on Tuesday I could have stopped for the week, but on Wednesday I transferred the third notebook and now all the ideas that I have been collecting from the start of this project are in Scrivener. I learned two valuable things from this. First, it does matter what task you complete, as long as it takes you to what you want to accomplish. I was a bit frustrated this week when I was not able to tackle what I originally wanted to do, but actually going over all my notes was quite interesting as I was able to see all of my progress up to this point. Additionally, I was able to transfer these notes into the specific topics in the outline, which really gave me an idea of the areas that I need to beef up with research. The second learning was that I seem to over estimate how much time it takes to complete a task. This led me to researching why we often error in estimating how long it will take to complete a task. This led me to Vierordt's Law, which states that when estimating a previous task, people overestimate short durations and underestimate long ones. This is exactly what I did when I dreaded the idea of transferring the notes to Scrivener. I thought in my mind that it would take A LOT of time, where actually the task itself was not that long. This is where I had an AHA moment as well, because often times I think that it is going to take more time to complete tasks (usually that are good for me) than it actually does. For example, I have been trying to complete three different exercises everyday to help with my posture, I try to do them in the middle of the day, but often times am not able to complete them until the later afternoon. The funny thing is I always think that it is going to take much more time than I think. On Monday I timed myself and they take less than 3 minutes to complete. WOW! So this led me to my big learning to just start tackling a tasks by using the 2-Minute rule. We often times overestimate how much time it will actually take to complete something and the consistent completion of these short tasks can actually create meaningful results. This led to what I learned in my WT this week.

I also learned about the "Aggregation of Marginal Gains," which I read on James Clear's site this week during the various times that I was waiting for something. This strategy comes from Dave Brailsford, who was the coach of the British cycling team. In 2009 he was hired to help the SKY (British team) capture a Tour de France title, as this had never been accomplished before. His strategy was simple, Brailsford looked for ways to improve all areas of cycling by 1%. Some were obvious improvements towards equipment and nutrition, but Brailsford went even deeper and found other ways that he could improve his cyclists' performance, such as which pillows would give them the best night sleep. By aggregating all of these 1% improvements, his team won the Tour de France in 2012, just 3 years after he started. In addition, the British cycling team won 70% of the medals in the 2012 Olympic games and won the Tour de France in 2013 as well.

Today, we often just look at the results of an event to see if a change is meaningful or not. What I mean, is that we see people lose 100 lbs or a student getting an A and say that they have made a positive change. In reality, these were produced by small improvements done consistently before they reached these results. Additionally, this is similar for bad habits. We get to unhealthy places by doing small, harmful things over a long period of time. This idea of aggregating marginal gains ties back to the learning from this week of just starting a task. By completing the task, you are in turn improving your self in a small way, and by consistently doing this every week, you will put your self in a position to produce a meaningful result during and at the end of the process. 1% by itself is almost insignificant and even unnoticeable at times, but imagine what you could do if you consistently made 1% improvements in different areas of your life? 

Thanks for tuning in and see you for Week 19.