Get 1% better every day
Improving by one percent a day compounds to 37.78 times over a year, because each day builds on the one before it.
Write down five things each morning, check off what you finish, and keep a record of the days you did.
What one percent a day adds up to
The calculation is easy enough to check yourself. Compounding a one percent daily change across 365 days gives you these two numbers.
1% better, every day
1.01365 =
37.78×
Thirty-seven times where you started, from a daily change small enough that you barely notice it.
1% worse, every day
0.99365 =
0.03×
The same calculation running the other way. After a year there is almost nothing left.
Nobody can measure one percent of a day. What the number describes is a change small enough that you will still do it tomorrow. The hard part is remembering on day 40 that day 40 still counts.
How it works
Three steps, under a minute a day. Anything that takes longer tends to get skipped by the second week.
Write down five things
Each morning, write down the five things that would make today count. For most people that is a shorter list than everything they have to do.
Check them off
One tap per task. Today’s square darkens as you go, so the record updates while you are still in the day.
Watch the year fill in
Grey for a day you missed, five shades of green for the rest. After a month there is enough of it to see your own patterns.
Today
How will you grow 1% today?
- Read 20 pages
- Run 5k before work
- Ship the pricing page
- Call Mum
- Sketch tomorrow's plan
3 of 5 done · 12 days in a row
Why the limit is five
Most trackers let you add as many habits as you want. That usually ends with forty items, few of them done, and an app you stop opening.
Five covers a normal day and is still finishable on a bad one. There is no sixth slot and no setting to add one.
You can only edit today and yesterday
Anything older is locked. A grid you can go back and tidy up stops being a record of how the month went.
The one-day window is there because finishing something at 11:55pm and ticking it at 12:05am should count for the day you did it.
Where “one percent better every day” comes from
When Dave Brailsford took over British Cycling, he went looking for hundreds of one percent improvements: seat ergonomics, tyre compound, the pillows the riders slept on. He called it the aggregation of marginal gains, and the team went from also-rans to Tour de France winners.
James Clear carried the idea into personal habits in Atomic Habits, where most people first meet the 1.01365 = 37.78 calculation. Both make the same argument, which is that repetition matters more than the size of the change.
That is what this app is for. Five things a day, and a record of the days you did them.
Questions
- What does getting 1% better every day mean?
- Each day's gain builds on the one before it, the way interest does, so a one percent daily improvement multiplies you by 37.78 over a year. One percent is not something you can measure directly. It describes a change small enough that you will still bother doing it tomorrow.
- Where does the 1% better idea come from?
- Dave Brailsford called it the aggregation of marginal gains at British Cycling: hundreds of one percent improvements that together took the team to Tour de France wins. James Clear brought it to a wider audience in Atomic Habits, which is where most people first meet the 1.01^365 = 37.78 calculation.
- Why only five tasks a day?
- Five covers a normal day and is short enough that finishing is realistic on a bad one. There is no way to add a sixth, and the limit is not configurable.
- Is it free?
- Yes. No card, and nothing to pay for at the moment.
- What happens if I miss a day?
- The square stays grey and your streak resets. Yesterday stays editable until midnight, so if you finished something at 11:55pm and only ticked it at 12:05am, it still counts for the right day.
- How is this different from a to-do list?
- A to-do list clears itself every evening. This one keeps the record, so after a few weeks the grid tells you more about your habits than the list does.