I know this sounds like the most boring topic ever, but humour me on this one.

It’s always important to make sure we are talking about the same thing, which is why I like to define my topic from time to time.

Aggregation – a total calculated by adding different amounts

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Marginal – relating to or resulting from small changes

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Gain – increase the amount or rate of

Put them all together and you have a total made up of small gains. This is where it starts to get interesting – if you have enough small gains, the aggregate can be something spectacular.

If, like me, you want to improve certain things you could aim for big, chunky improvements in one specific area. Or, you could aim for a bunch of small improvements spread out across several areas.

I can tell you from experience, the smaller improvements are a hell of a lot easier to find. When I first started as a legal secretary, I couldn’t touch type and the firm offered to arrange training for me to acquire that skill. Since I’m not stupid, I accepted their offer and learned how to touch type.

We can all agree that this is a small improvement, after all, most people who work in an office can type. The difference it makes became clear when I spent last week cleaning out old files from our archives and I was, on average, 50% faster than the casual staff we engaged to help with the project.

Me being able to touch type wasn’t the sole factor, I also had a better understanding of what file types we were dealing with and do far too much data entry as part of my job (again more marginal improvements). The takeaway is that aggregate of these small differences was significant.

If I had just tried to learn how to type 50% faster than everyone else, I may not even have been able to meet my goal. By aggregating these smaller improvements instead, I was able to achieve the same increase in efficiency by improving skills which are useful in more than one area of my professional life.

This holds true in different areas like sport as well. Perhaps the most notable example is the British cycling team which famously dominated the cycling events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics after being the laughing stock of the cycling world for the preceding 100+ years. They looked at every aspect which could conceivably impact performance and then tweaked it. Everything from the type of pillow the team used to designing more comfortable bike seats to the best way to avoid illness and thereby reduce time off from training was improved. No improvement was considered too small.

A lot of these things alone wouldn’t have made any difference – I mean, a couple of days off for a cold don’t matter that much over a year, but when you add all these little improvements together the whole was so much more than the sum of its parts.

While there are a lot of career/sport/hobby specific things you can work on, there are also some very simple steps you can take to improve your performance across the board.

Get enough sleep – we all know that sleep is the bomb and that we suffer when we don’t get enough. And it isn’t just our minds that suffer when we are tired, our bodies struggle as well.

Eat well – this is another no brainer. If you are hopped up on sugar your mind is going to be all over the place and the inevitable crash isn’t much fun. If you are training hard but not giving your body what it needs to recover, your results will be sub-par.

Optimise your morning and evening routines – getting off to a good start makes such a difference to your mental state.throughout the day. Having routines and systems in place which mean you aren’t looking for matching socks 10 minutes after you should have left the house can only be a good thing.

you should have left the house can only be a good thing. Find the best route to work for you – I prefer the one with the least lane changes, but you may prefer the most scenic or the one that has the best drive-thru coffee.

Now these all sound simple because they are. But being simple doesn’t mean they aren’t worth doing. Combine these basics with more specific improvements based on your personal goals and you have a recipe for success.

I’d love to hear about the small improvements which have made a big difference in your life in the comments below.