The 1% Secret That Every Entrepreneur and Engineer Mysteriously Ignores

As an entrepreneur or embedded systems engineer, managing emotions, anxiety, and stress is crucial, as these factors directly impact your decision-making process.

High-quality decisions stem from good emotional management, and over time, these decisions accumulate and significantly impact your success. Even small daily improvements, just 1%, can lead to substantial growth—up to 37 times better over the course of a year when considering the compound effect over 365 days.

To illustrate, here’s a simplified example:

• • Day 1: Initial value = 100. 1% increase = 1. New value = 101
  • Day 2: Initial value = 101. 1% increase = 1.01. New value = 102.01
  • Day 3: Initial value = 102.01. 1% increase = 1.02. New value = 103.03

And so on for 365 days. By the end of the year, the final value will be approximately 3778, or 37 times the initial value.

For entrepreneurs and engineers, this principle means that consistent, small improvements in your skills, processes, or knowledge can lead to significant progress. Whether it's refining your business strategies, improving your coding practices, or enhancing your technical skills, incremental improvements can have a profound impact.

Conversely, allowing your skills or processes to deteriorate by even just 0.1% each day can erode your progress, nullifying it by the end of the year. This is how progress can stall. It’s not "bad luck" or "lack of opportunity." Stagnation results from a series of small, poor decisions that accumulate over time.

Focus on making small daily improvements to ensure long-term success.

• Improving your project management, programming techniques, or problem-solving skills by just 1% a day will yield extraordinary results over time.
• Similarly, enhancing your design practices, code quality, or efficiency by 1% a day can drive impressive gains.

Avoid the temptation of seeking instant results, shortcuts, or quick fixes. Instead, invest daily in your skills and knowledge, and enjoy the unstoppable snowball effect of compounded growth.

Take Action:

• Use a planner and write clearly every day what you want to improve. Commit to doing this for 250 days, if not the entire year.
• By the end of the year, you’ll reap the rewards of your consistent efforts.

Be more like Warren Buffet and less like those promoting "quick fixes" and instant results.