Aggregation of Marginal Gains

The phrase belongs to Dave Brailsford, who took charge of British Cycling when the team had little history of winning and set out to find a small improvement in everything: the fit of the saddle, the fabric of the racing suits, the pillows riders slept on, even the way they washed their hands to avoid catching colds. None of these changes mattered on its own. Together, and over years, they were part of the Olympic medals and Tour de France wins that British riders collected in the period that followed. James Clear opens Atomic Habits with this story because it shows the arithmetic of habits. Getting one percent better every day for a year leaves you roughly thirty-seven times better; getting one percent worse every day brings you close to zero. The arithmetic matters less than what it reveals: a habit's effect is invisible on any single day, so people judge it by today and give up. Clear's answer is to judge a habit by its trajectory, the direction your daily choices are pointing, rather than by where you stand this week.