Towards the end of 2024 someone asked me if I have any New Year’s Resolutions.
Rather than coming up with resolutions, which I think are fleeting and hardly ever maintained, let alone remembered, I like to come up with a yearly theme that will guide me over the next 365 days. By having a theme, I have a north star that provides me with a sense of direction, and encourages me to move forward establishing better habits and behaviors that align with that direction.
So after much deliberation, my theme for this year is what I call “the 1° mindset.”
What do I mean by this?
Imagine you have a special contraption that creates heat whenever you crank it. You connect this contraption to a giant pot of water, and every day you do just enough cranking on the machine to heat the water up by a single degree. It doesn’t take much effort, but it is somewhat of an inconvenience to crank the machine every day, especially since nothing particularly noteworthy happens despite the water getting slightly warmer.
But you keep at it nonetheless.
Then one day, just like every other day, you will put in your 1 degree of effort, but something different will happen this time. All of those days of putting in your 1-degree have compounded and the water increases from 211 to 212 degrees F. At this point it instantly undergoes a phase transformation in which the molecular structure of water breaks down, and its stored potential energy is released.
In other words it has reached boiling point, and your consistent efforts have gone from producing nothing, to producing steam; the same steam that powered the industrial revolution and the empires that were build as a result.
The lesson here is that putting in an extra 1 degree of effort may not seem to make a difference when looking through a narrow lens. When the distance is short and the timeframe is small, there is no obvious benefit to putting in an extra degree of effort. However, when you zoom out and see the bigger horizon it becomes evident that consistently going one degree further eventually triggers a phase transformation, thus creating massive separation between what currently is and what will be.
I use the word separation because it implies that two things once were together, occupying the same space at one point in time, yet with the passage of time, distance is created between the two. It is only because the trajectory of one thing is slightly altered (even by just a single degree) that two things which started off in the same place end up far apart from each other given enough time.
This is an important concept because I think too often, it is assumed that someone who is operating at a higher level was simply born gifted with natural talents. However, in actuality the person who seems far removed from the common man started from the same point as everyone else. Except, they put in the work to slightly alter their trajectory, which in due time, amounted to separation being created between them and the average person.
Someone who is insanely intelligent reached that point one book at a time, with each book initiating greater separation.
Someone who is financially free reached that point one investment at a time, with each investment initiating greater separation.
Someone who is very physically fit reached that point one workout and one meal at a time, with each workout and meal initiating greater separation.
Understanding the concept of separation, is to know that on a day to day basis, the actions that you take will hardly make a noticeable difference, but with enough time you will distance yourself from the status quo and find yourself operating at a completely different altitude that others cannot comprehend.
Thus the “1° Mindset” promotes a lifestyle that focuses on adjusting your trajectory by just one degree to create massive separation between you and the masses as the months, years, and decades pass.
I have no issues with those who attempt to make massive change all at once, but there is a time and place for making grand and sweeping changes to one’s life. This doesn’t represent the norm, and an many cases does not produce sustainable outcomes. The grand transformation requires high levels of motivation and activation energy, both of which are fleeting.
Also, some things just take time and can’t really be shortcutted despite one’s most valiant efforts.
Additionally I firmly believe that slow, steady, and progressive steps forward tends to produce more sizeable gains in the long run. So rather than trying to make massive change all at once, instead intensely focus on consistency over all else. Consistently go the extra degree.
So taking the 1-degree approach, and aiming for slight overperformance over the long run presents a more workable strategy that not only produces insane results, but also comes with a host of unintentional learning and self-development benefits.
I must stress that the key is to focus on no more than a small degree of extra effort. This isn’t about going all out at once to try to force rapid change.
I also should say that as humans we are limited in our capabilities. We’re neither perfect nor omnipotent, thus it is unreasonable to expect to be excellent in all areas of life. However we do have the capacity to dominate in 3-5 areas of life which are of the greatest importance to us. It’s up to you to figure that part out, but I have a suspicion that your intuition already knows what those areas of life are.
You see, we all have things that interest us. We all dream of the potential of what could be. We all think about what an ideal life would look like to some extent. Whatever thoughts and ideas have continued to surface in your mind over the past months and years is probably a good clue. These are probably signals from your subconscious mind about matters that are of greatest priority to you as of late.
Recurring thoughts of needing to get into better shape, thoughts of needing to get one’s financial house in order. Thoughts of starting a business. Thoughts of reconnecting with old friends. Thoughts of building stronger relationships with children or loved ones. Thoughts of going on that grand adventure that you’ve been putting off.
It would be wise to listen to the thoughts that keep coming back to you because they are providing you with valuable information regarding what is most important to you at this stage of your life.
Once you figure out the 3-5 most important aspects of life for you, only then is it an appropriate time to begin putting the 1-degree mindset into motion. It’s one thing to think about things, but it’s another to put graphite to papyrus and start taking action. But the beauty of this approach is that grand and sweeping actions are not what is asked of you. Rather you should focus on slightly overperforming every day. You want to do a little bit more than the baseline of performance in that particular area… but the key is in the consistency.
The beauty in this is that overperforming the status quo is very easy to do these days. With the populace distracted to no end with comforts, conveniences, and instant gratifications of modern society, the baseline of performance is so low that it actually doesn’t take much to excel above average.
For example, I have a life goal to become conversational in a foreign language. I’m not alone in this, considering that about 50% of the U.S. adult population desires to learn a new language (not including languages learned as a child or second languages spoken in the home). Despite the desire to learn, the baseline for learning a new language as an adult in the U.S. is to do absolutely nothing or make a very half-hearted and short-lived attempt at learning via a gamified app like DuoLingo. With this being the baseline, the threshold for 1 degree beyond doesn’t require much. A mere 20-30 minutes of consistent study daily will propel a person to relative excellence considering the threshold for over-performance.
In fact, only about 10% of the adult population actively pursues their desire to learn a new language and only about 5% of the adult population achieves conversational proficiency in a new language learned after the age of 18. This is despite the 50% of the adult population who possess a desire to do so.
This is an example of understanding the baseline and curating your life to go the extra degree beyond.
Many people have aspirations to do all kinds of things that sound good to talk about. New skills, new projects, new businesses, new habits, etc.. You might not be surprised to hear that about ¼ of Americans claim to have no time to make desired lifestyle changes. But what is surprising (for me at least) is that only about 1/3 of Americans have some sort of plan for their lives. Despite this, the average American spends about 6 hours per day watching TV, streaming online entertainment, playing video games, following sports, online shopping, etc.
In your case, if you truly do aspire to accomplish some new things in your life or make lifestyle changes, then the baseline for performance from which you can put in your extra 1 degree of effort is clear. This could mean replacing a mere 30 minutes of unproductive daily screen time with 30 minutes a day of pursuing your grander life goals.
This tallies up to just a bit short of 200 hours of advancement over the course of a year, which is nothing to laugh at. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like much, but that’s about the same amount of time that a full-time college student spends in the classroom during a semester. Or rather, the average book takes about 20 hours to read, meaning that one could read about 10 books over the course of a year with the time re-allocation.
In fact, the rule of 100 hours dictates that 100 hours of time dedicated to skills and knowledge that extends beyond the norm generally places you in the upper echelon of the population in that particular area of life. Sure you wont be anywhere close to the elites who’ve put in 10,000+ hours, but you will be far more advanced than the average.
Now you may be wondering why I am talking about outperforming society, especially if happiness is supposed to come from within, and comparison is the so called “thief of joy.” The motive is not about comparing oneself to others, but rather to calibrate your own measures of success from which you will compete against yourself.
When you do this… When you observe the baseline of performance of specific areas of your life that matter to you, and when you seriously commit to going the extra degree each and every day, you have the power to fundamentally change your life.
This is how I ended up going with “The 1° Mindset” as my theme for the year. After a past few months of stagnation and being unfocused, going into the new year with this commitment to just do a little bit better, do a little bit more, every day is my plan for getting back to seeing how far I can take things in this journey that we call life.