Compound Fitness Interest

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Summer is over and now is about the time when people begin to realize they've gotten a little lax with their health habits...
 
Screwing up here and there is okay, but after about the third time, you've begun the process of creating a new bad habit.
 
I want you to take a moment and examine the last few weeks (or months) and see if this is you. 
 
Do your best to be honest with yourself if you have the bad habits sneak back into your life.
 
If you have, it's okay! We've caught it now, time to get back on track.
 
You need to figure out what's positioning you to do these habits and then change your environment so that bad habits become hard and the good habits become easy.
 
We just need to be a little better every day.
 
1% improvement doesn't seem like much...
 
And it's not, but the compounding of it is.
 
Consider: 
 
1% improvement every day for one year.
 
Versus the opposite:
 
1% worse Everyday for one year.
 
The results:
 
1.01^365  =   37.78
0.99^365  =   00.03
 
1% better every day for one year is almost 38 times better than you were last year.*
 
As opposed to a mere 3% of the person you were 1-year ago by fostering bad habits every day.
 
It's important to note that the above example uses only a 1% bad day, which means you only screwed up a little bit, regardless it still compounds.
 
Soon eating Ice Cream on Tuesday is the new norm and other bad habits ensue from there.
 
With all of this said, life isn't necessarily a nice little math problem, and for most of us, our good and bad days are intermingled throughout the year.
 
What this thought experiment should demonstrate is that your bad days are more of a detriment,  than your good days are a benefit.
 
On a bigger scale this looks like: 
 
1 x 150% = 1.5 (Good Day)
1.5 x 50% = .75 (Bad Day)
.75 x 150% = 1.125  (Good Day)
1.125 x 50% = .563  (Bad Day)
.563 x 150% = .845  (Good Day)
.845 x 50% = .423  (Bad Day)
 
And so on...
 
This can be a particularly difficult concept to appreciate as this is more focused on your trajectory rather than where you are right now.
 
At the beginning of any venture, you often see very little to almost no progress. 
 
At this point, most people get discouraged and just quit, but in reality, their 1% actions just haven't had enough time to compound and show any significant result.
 
Imagine an ice cube sitting in a 20-degree room.*
 
You begin to heat the room up.
 
21 degrees: Nothing.
 
22 Degrees: Still nothing.
 
You persist!
 
28 degree: Still no change.
 
Finally, you get to 31 degrees, and you decide to quit because THIS SUCKS, you're taking all of the right actions, and there is STILL no visible improvement.
 
When all you had to do was hold out until 32 degrees, the melting point, for you to start to see the progress of your compounding habits.
 
Think of anyone who was an "Overnight Success" and I guarantee that if you watched them for the five years leading up to their success, they checked the boxes every day and often many days without seeing any progress.
 
At a certain point, a lot of hard work begins to look like natural talent.
 
Hopefully, this inspires some of you to get back into gear!
 
If you need a little help feel free to schedule a call here to see how I can help.

If you don't need the call and just want to get going sign-up here and we'll get going!


*Examples taken from James Clear's awesome book: Atomic Habits. If you haven't read this one yet, I suggest you do! It's a game changer!