Photo credit :http://www.funfeel.net/

I recently ran across this fantastic motivational tool, something that I found to be just mind blowing!

A simple formula

The concept is a simple one:

If “1” is 100% of your effort yesterday, then if today you do only by 1% more, you will do 1.01. If every day you do just 1% more than yesterday then the result is huge increment within 1 year!

Here’s another way to think about it. Say you start with your effort in fencing on January 1st, and we’ll assign that a value of 100. That’s where you are on day one, where you stand right now in terms of skill and effort – 100.  If you’re able to increase that by just 1% every single day, then you’ll end up with a value of 3,778.34, or 37.78 times what you had at the beginning of the year on December 31st in terms of your fencing!For you serious mathematicians out there, let’s really break it down.

100 * (1 + 1%) ^ 365 = 3,778.34.

Getting that 1% every single day in fencing means doing small things to improve yourself. It might be tackling your form, or exploring a new technique. It could be learning more about the qualification system or taking extra time to do supportive exercises. Each day to add new pieces to your arsenal, and before too long you’ve got this tremendous amount of tools, techniques, physical strength and knowledge at your fingertips! It truly is about baby steps.

This applies to everything: your school, art, sport, music! You can use this rule when it comes to finances or cleaning, literally anything! That’s a powerful motivator because it means that you can have those big goals without having to rely on making giant leaps forward. Gradual progress sticks with you and builds on itself, almost automatically!

It goes both ways

On the other side, if every day you give yourself the freedom of a 1% slack from yesterday’s effort, then within one year you will completely deteriorate down to nothing. In life, we grow forward or we become overwhelmed by the progress, and fencing is certainly no different.

This is something that we have seen happy to many people. Taking a break, slacking off, these things build on one another until the overwhelm an individual and take them under. It’s so important to keep growing! If we don’t keep growing, if we don’t keep pushing to learn new techniques and to raise our standards, even by just a bit every day, then we as fencers start to stagnate and fall behind.

The original piece that sparked my understanding of this idea was published on Fun Feel, which is a site in Russian. However this isn’t a new idea, it’s one that you’ll find again and again in many places. That’s because it works!

You CAN do it! You can make big changes in life and improve your fencing through a simple and small steps. Transformation isn’t something that comes all in one fell swoop – it’s a process that is made up of little tiny bits of space, effort and diligence – 1% at a time.