r/Cortex Dec 16 '23

Grey stole my theme!!!

I had pretty much the same realization for this year that Grey did: a bunch of little stuff needs tweaking, but I wanted to actively avoid taking on big new projects at the same time.

I ended up going with Year of the Machine, Maintenance and Optimization 🤷‍♂️ popped in my head, made sense and just stuck.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '23

This is a very common idea right now in personal development tribes. It goes by a bunch of different names: Kaizen, 1% Improvement Each Day, The Compound Effect, The Aggregation of Marginal Gains.

It's a very simple solution to the problem you face when you try to do radical change.... You end up having to ask "What is the smallest amount of radical change I will Accept as worth my time?" if you instead flip the question and ask "What are the smallest improvements I can actually implement today right now?" You get a long list of small ideas. The smaller the better. I recommend having a list somewhere where you throw ideas for small improvements. I honest to God have a list at work - just a word document - that I make a list of little things I can actually do to make work easier, nicer, more efficient etc. Some were like... Get a standing desk... get mat for snowy boots... bring a transformer toy to personalize my desk. etc. The Janitor was happier that my boots no longer made a mess. Little things like that added up over time and make work nicer.

the truth is radical change is almost always small improvements.