how to get 1% better every day (project 365)

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Transcript

00:00

In Atomic Habits by James Clear, there is the 1% rule. You see the math here is if you get 1% better every single day, then in 365 days, you're 37 times better.

The main problem that most people face is they try to improve too much at once, too much too quickly. And

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what happens is they improve 50% in a week and then they fall back into old ways. They start scrolling again.

They start procrastinating and they struggle with discipline. And that's why the 1% rule is so effective because most people stay in the exact same place every single year.

And if you don't want that

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to be you, if you want to actually make the changes towards building the life that you desire, then this video is for you. People fail because they treat self-improvement as a momentary feeling instead of treating it like a proper system and structure which is going to create lasting results.

So, we need to

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make self-improvement a proper structured operation. Now, in this video, I'm going to show you how to turn that 1% theory into an actual blueprint for your success.

And that is where project 365 comes in. Part one, the permanence of wins.

You see, progress is not linear at all. Progress is so

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exponential. It goes like this and then all of a sudden you have the overnight success and your progress just compounds and everything just transforms.

You see, wins are permanent and so is knowledge. Even one day spent productively reading books, going outside, grimming, exercising, and having a good routine.

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Even one day and one win is a permanent win. It is permanent evidence for your future self.

Most people they just see these wins as fleeting and they forget that they are permanent and that's where you lose motivation and that's where you get discouraged. So just realize that any XP you gain just like you would in a

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video game it is permanent. Anytime you read a book for 5 minutes, for 10 minutes, anytime you meditate, you read, you journal, anytime you work on your business and you're super focused, every single win is forever.

it stays and it doesn't go and it's just there with you

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all the time. Now, thinking like this really allows the 1% rule to kick in because now you're not worried about big spikes and big jumps.

You know that you can't just go lower than you were before. You can always just stack wins and get better and better and better.

Even though sometimes it feels like you might be stagnating, in reality, you're

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not actually stagnating. You're just stacking up progress that is potential that is only going to show in a month and two months and 3 months because the feedback isn't always momentary.

The feedback is delayed. The book you read today is not going to change your life tomorrow.

The 15 minutes you meditate is

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not going to change your life like this. But it stacks and it compounds and eventually all those books, all those 1% compounded over time and just multiplied will create a completely different person, an identity that can't fail.

Let's say you read 10 pages of a book

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every single day. Now, the 10 pages by themselves aren't going to change your life.

But when you go a year from now, those 10 pages every day turn into 3,650 pages, which is equivalent to 10 books, maybe 12 books. And yes, those 12 books will have changed your life

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significantly. You see, when you build a habit, you aren't just building a routine.

You are building a reservoir of proof. You are building wins.

You're building a catalog of evidence that you are the person you say you are, that you are headed in the direction of your choosing. You see, let's say you go to the gym for 6 months and then 1 month

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you can't go to the gym for whatever reason. Now, you might think your progress is lost, but you'll soon realize that muscle memory kicks in and when you're back in the gym, it takes just 2 weeks to start seeing those results again.

It's the same thing with a bicycle. Once you learn how to ride a bike, you can't unlearn how to ride a

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bike. You might be rusty.

You might have to, you know, ride for a little bit just to figure things out, but you just know how to ride a bike and it stays with you forever. And that's the same thing with wins.

Anything you do from today till 1 year till 1 and 1/2 years, whatever time frame you want, any good habit, any

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positive indication that you're going to be successful, like reading, like journaling, like deep work, like focus, like staying away from the bad habits, any positive action is going to help you forever. It is going to stay with you.

And that is the beauty of self-improvement. And that is the beauty of improving your life.

You can only get

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better. And that 1% turns into 365% which just stacks and changes your life over time.

I really like this analogy that just brings everything together. You see, the success that you want is like building a house.

To build a house, you first need to lay bricks. And to lay

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bricks, you need to just stack them on top of each other. And the thing is, once you have 15 bricks laid on top of each other, you can't even see the house.

You don't really see the structure. It just looks like a couple of bricks stacked together.

And then you keep laying bricks and eventually you have 50 bricks, 100 bricks, and 150 bricks. And for such a long time, it

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doesn't seem like there's going to be a house there. You can't actually see the house.

But as you just stack and lay bricks, soon enough you'll be able to see the house start to form and start to shape until you have the final house. And that's where you get your success.

Just because you can't see it yet

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doesn't mean each individual brick isn't worth it, isn't valuable, just as valuable as the last one. The first brick is just as important as the last and final brick towards building the house in this analogy which is your success.

Now part number two is project 365. Now let me tell you about this concept and project 365 isn't just a

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project. It is a contract.

A contract with yourself that for the next 365 days you will commit to living a better life. You will commit to adopting good habits to changing your ways improving your routines and getting rid of bad habits.

Most people live their lives vaguely.

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They don't have proper structure, proper systems, proper identity frames. And that is why because they have these vague systems, this vague motivation.

They never see real and tangible and specific results. To get specific results, you need to take specific action.

You need to have specific

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routines and specific systems in place to keep you going even when you don't feel like it. So treat this next year.

And lucky for you, we're at the beginning of January, which means you have the whole year ahead of you to make this change. Now, treat project 365 as a contract that starts from today, the

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time that you're watching this video, till 365 days in the future. And you're going to want to commit not to one week of intense training or one day where you read for you read 100 pages and then you never open the book again.

We are aiming for 1% improvements every single day. As

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long as you can be consistent with that 1%, you will be successful in one year because the 100% the 50% improvements, they don't matter if you're just doing them every 5 years. So setting yourself non-negotiables, a rule of non-negotiable lists.

You can also comment this down below just to lock it

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in. These are my current non-negotiables.

Read every single morning for 1 hour, meditate for 15 minutes, journal for another 15 minutes, hop onto my computer, do some deep work for 3 hours, and then have lunch and then repeat the process of deep work. And then I'll train, I'll exercise my

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body, I'll keep healthy, I'll have only healthy meals and I will read at night as well, I'll sleep early. These are my non-negotiables.

And the more you can quantify them, the easier it's going to get. Now, obviously, those non-negotiables are just off the top of my head, but I do have them in place on my notion document.

I use a notion habit

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tracker. I use a whiteboard.

I use all types of systems to keep me accountable. And that is why I'm able to see consistent progress with myself, with who I want to be, with my discipline and my habits.

And that's also what we do inside our private community, Discipline OS. Basically, the whole point is you take your goal where you want to be and

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imagine you could tie that to daily non-negotiable actions, which means that every single day you take the daily actions to get to that goal, which makes it almost impossible not to move forward, not to create progress, and not to just be your best self and achieve your full potential. So, day one of

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project 365, you're just another person writing down their plans and their dreams. This doesn't mean that you've made progress.

That just means that you've set the intention and that you are starting and now you need to reframe this so that day 30 of project 365 all of a sudden now you are the person who

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has stuck to their word and their promises and their goals for 30 days and then at day 100 you become a disciplined person. You become a person who can stay consistent who can do the things they have to do and focus and be that person that is going to achieve success.

Now

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part number three is the subtraction and addition rule. This is only something the 1% realize.

The 1% rule applies to pretty much anything, but it doesn't just mean adding 1% adding 1% more pages, reading 1% more pages, journaling 1% more, or exercising 1% more. It means

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also removing 1% of the things that are holding you back. Let me explain.

A lot of the times less is more. So subtracting friction, removing friction, removing your phone from your room, cutting down on 1% distractions every single day.

That is also the 1% rule. And in this case, it also becomes the 2%

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rule because 1 plus 1 equals 2. Which basically means that if you're able to simultaneously get 1% better every day while also getting 1% less distracted and less procrastinating every day, then 1 plus 1 is two and you have 2% improvements every day.

Cuz focus and

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distraction, they can't coexist. So when you want to focus on something, when you want to focus on your life, you need to cut down on distractions.

So improvement by removal is also an important thing. You don't just add things, but you're also removing things that are holding you back.

So, if you're saying no to one more bad habit, if you're saying no to

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one more thing that is holding you back, one more negative thought, one more limiting belief, then you're creating space which is automatically going to be filled by a good habit, something better, another thought, another idea, another identity frame that is way, way better for you. I remember reading this book, Atomic Habits 5 years ago.

And

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ever since then, I've been applying these rules to my life to create fundamental change. And a couple of things I've been doing as well is for example habit stacking.

For a long time I couldn't sit down and meditate. It was super hard for me.

But what I could do was read. I always read every morning.

So instead I took this reading habit

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which was already strong. And I just stacked meditating right on top of it.

So I would read and then I would meditate right after that without doing anything else so I don't get distracted because I know if I think I'll meditate later sometime in the afternoon, sometime later today and it's probably never going to happen. So I always moved

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it right after reading to lock the habits in to stack habits. That's also something that has helped me immensely.

So remove all the clutter. That's a big thing.

Get 1% better every day. And also remove 1% distractions every day.

Make your environment 1% more productive, 1% more effective day by day. And in 365

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days, you will be a completely different person. You will achieve your dream life.

It is actually not that hard to change your life so drastically in 365 days. You just need to stick to a a plan.

And you need to have a system and you need to focus on micro improvements that just compound over time. Now part

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two is the compound effect of identity. So imagine how good your life would be if you don't need willpower to do the things you have to do because you have the confidence to do them because you are the type of person who does those things.

I don't have to force myself to read. I know that reading is good for me

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and I've gotten to a place where I don't have to have willpower to read. I don't have to feel motivated to read.

I just do it out of pure enjoyment because it has become just what I do. I just that's just what I do.

But at the very beginning, I had to force myself to read. I had to, you know, gather all my willpower and mental strength to just

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sit down and read for 10 minutes. But eventually over time, these types of things, they become things you enjoy.

At the very start of your journey, you're going to find it hard to do things that are going to change your life and make you successful, like reading, like meditating, like discipline, like habits, like mental clarity. But

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eventually over time you will start to enjoy the things that are actually good for you. The deep work.

You're going to start to enjoy the walks, the running, the exercise, the reading, the journaling, the meditating. You're going to enjoy those things and that's dopamine shifting.

As you start applying the 1% rule in your life, your dopamine

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baseline starts to go back to normal and hence you start to enjoy everything that you previously didn't really care about. Once you rewire your dopamine like that, it becomes easier to enjoy the important things in your life.

And this change in self-image, this 1% shift also ties back

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to confidence. You see, confidence and discipline go hand in hand.

The more confident you are, the more disciplined you are. The more disciplined you allow yourself to be, the more confidence you create.

Now, confidence is the number one thing that will help you achieve success, make your life better, achieve

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what you want to achieve, and get to your goals. Confidence is literally life-changing.

It is everything. And now, a simple thing, what is actually confidence?

Confidence is simply stacking wins. Every single time you gather a win, every time you do something that is an achievement, then you feel good about yourself.

You have

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all this evidence, all this belief that you are a valuable person who can achieve things. The more I worked on myself, the more disciplined I got, the more I started reading books, the more I started journaling and exercising and meditating, the more confident I got, the more my YouTube channel grew with time, the harder I worked, the more work

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I put into it, the more consistent I was, the more confidence I created for myself. The same thing goes with making money.

The more money I made, the more confident I started to feel. The more things I achieved, the more confidence came in.

Confidence is just winning, winning, winning, winning. The more you can win.

And that also comes to the 1%

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rule. When you're making these 1% shifts, these 1% improvements and wins, like making your bed, for example.

It doesn't change your life, but it's just 1% better. It's just 1% win.

And that 1% really feeds that identity. And it makes you more confident.

And because you're

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more confident, then you're going to do more of the good things. And now part five, this is the quick startup guide.

Number one is planning, which I made a whole dedicated video to. Step two is the daily 1% audit.

So before bed, just ask yourself this one simple question. What is one thing I did today that I should not do tomorrow?

And also, what

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is one thing I did today that I should be doing tomorrow? And now step number three is just fix that one thing and then repeat this process for 365 days.

If you only fix your mistakes, then just by nature, you will achieve your goal. So if you remove everything that is holding you back just by definition you

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will just find yourself automatically and naturally getting closer to your destination. And then step four is tracking plus reflecting.

And this is the last but most important step which I go further into detail in this video I made right here. How to create systems in your life.

So watch it over here. I'll see you in the next video.

Oh, you

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got this.