The power of incremental gains

In 2003, British Cycling changed. It was the year in which the governing organization appointed Dave Brailsford as its performance director. British riders hadn’t won an Olympic gold medal since 1908 and performed even worse in the Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist won.

It got so bad that one of Europe’s leading bike manufacturers even refused to provide bikes to the British team because they feared it would affect sales if other pros saw them using them.

Brailsford was engaged in revamping British Cycling, but he was hired for a particular reason: his unrelenting commitment to a tactic he called “the aggregation of marginal benefits” set him apart from other coaches. Brailsford’s philosophy, “If you break down everything that goes into riding a bike and enhance it by 1 percent, you will get a huge increase when you add it all together.”

Over the years, Brailsford and his coaches made small changes to the pro cycling team. They made the bike seats more comfortable and splashed alcohol on the tires for grip. They requested riders to wear electrically heated over shorts to maintain muscle temperature and employed biofeedback sensors to assess athlete response.

The team studied textiles in a wind tunnel and switched outside cyclists to indoor racing suits, which were lighter and more aerodynamic.

They weren’t done. Brailsford and his team found 1% gains in previously ignored areas. They evaluated massage gels to see which boosted muscle healing. They hired a surgeon to train each rider on how to wash hands to prevent colds. They found each rider’s best pillow and mattress. They painted the inside of the team truck white to spot dust that could affect the bikes’ performance.

As these and other little changes added up, results came faster than expected. Five years after Brailsford took control, the British Cycling team won 60% of the gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Four years later, the Brits set nine Olympic and seven world records in London.

Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France in 2012. Chris Froome won the event the next year and again in 2015, 2016, and 2017, giving the British squad five Tour de France wins in six years. From 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships, 66 Olympic or Paralympic gold medals, and 5 Tour de France titles, making it the most successful decade in cycling history.

This anecdote, taken from the #1 New York Times Bestseller “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, leaves you with an obvious question: what happened? How can a squad of average athletes become world champions with small changes? Most importantly, how can you reproduce this strategy in your own business?

We frequently think change is only relevant if it has a large, apparent result. We often put pressure on ourselves to achieve an earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

Improving by 1% isn’t significant (or even noticeable). But long term, it can be game-changing.

You see, in the beginning, 1% better or worse makes no difference. It won’t affect you today. But these small improvements or declines compound over time, creating a large gap between those who make small improvements over a broad spectrum (days, aspects, components, etc.) and those who don’t.

Moral of the Story

If you improve by 1% per day for a year, you’ll be 31 times better.

Small improvements don’t seem significant initially, but they pile up with time.

For the past year, I’ve been entirely dedicated to small, consistent improvements. I’ve designed systems that help me set goals for the year, track my results, and even guide my daily routines.

It all starts with writing it down. I write a daily journal every day, starting at 07:15 and finishing around 08:00.

Over the past year, people have asked me many times about my systems. Their difference in my life has been so apparent that the question became obvious: “how did you do it?”.

For this year, my goal is to write in public and share how I iterate on these systems. I hope they help you too.

If you have any questions or want to start a conversation, please feel free to reach out directly by adding me on LinkedIn or post a comment below. Cheers.