How the top 1% achieve so much more than the rest

I always thought that the elite performers in the top 1% in their field are able to achieve much more than the rest because they have a kind of X factor that allows them to work harder, longer and better than the rest of us. . Then it occurred to me – maybe it’s not willpower that works here.

Perhaps these people don’t “force” themselves to get stronger, faster, smarter, or more successful.

Perhaps everything is much deeper.

Perhaps the reason the most productive people in the world are REAL is because their whole life is about getting better at their job.

Seinfeld solution.

In 1998 Jerry Seinfeld made $267 million from the ninth and final season of his hit show Seinfeld.

Yes, that’s a quarter of a billion dollars. No, this is not a typo. NBC begged him to do season 10 in the amount of $5 million for a 22-episode series. He refused.

Needless to say, it was a great decade for him. But the 2000s were not bad for him either – syndication deals for his already classic show bring stable salary of about 32 million dollars a year. Not bad, Jerry. Quite good.

But let’s get back. Back before he was a billionaire comedian on the edge. Even before it was even a household name.

How can one accumulate talent, skill and productivity to write joke after joke, show after show, year after year at such a high level?

Comedian Brad Isaac shares history about a chance meeting with Seinfeld backstage. He asked Jerry if he had any “advice for a young comedian”.

This is how Brad describes the conversation:

“He said that to be a better comedian you have to come up with the best jokes, and to make the best jokes you have to write every day.

He told me to take a large wall calendar with the year on one page and hang it in a conspicuous place. The next step was to get a large red magic marker. He said that every day I did a writing assignment, I should mark that day with a big red X.

In a few days you will have a chain. Just keep going and the chain will get longer every day. You will love this chain, especially when you have a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is not to break the chain.”

Pay attention here.

You will notice that Jerry didn’t say anything about good jokes. He didn’t even mention how long the action was supposed to last. The task is very simple: write something every day, put a cross on the calendar and not break the chain.

This is almost simple enough to be counter-intuitive, but let’s think about what’s going on here. There are several very complex processes going on. Consider how you could use this model with the skills or processes you are trying to improve productivity with:

1. Doing something every day makes it your default behavior.

Most of us don’t need to force ourselves to brush our teeth in the morning. Brushing your teeth does not cause mental stress or cognitive dissonance. You just do it… because you are. Seinfeld managed to integrate jokes into his routine from day to day. Over time, he connected his personality with writing, and from there it became much easier to follow through.

2. Daily default behavior becomes a habit.

Habitual activities almost ALWAYS improve due to their frequency. In Jerry’s case, if he writes every day, he’s bound to come across some funny stuff. After 365 days of non-stop writing, you’re guaranteed some nuggets of wisdom just from the sheer volume of material created over time.

Basically, you are using your own human tendency to create habits to work AGAINST your natural tendency to procrastinate, slow down, and be unproductive. Instead of setting vague goals and hoping you have the power to achieve them, you actively install new software (also known as a habit) into your brain’s computer to ensure that the program (also known as a goal) will run.

Over time, new software WILL be installed. You will literally have no choice but to do the habit every day. From there success in cruise control.

The only thing you need to do is NOT break the chain.

How does it work for me.

I have made great strides in incorporating new habits into my daily rituals. The best thing about creating a new habit is that after a while you forget it’s a “new” habit. It becomes so natural that you don’t have to keep track anymore. It’s just what you do. I’ve done this with a few different things that used to be a serial execution struggle for me. Now I manage to do them every day without even thinking:

• Making my bed (had a 67 day streak before I stopped tracking. My mom would have been SHOCKED)

• Meditation (had a streak of over 70 days before I no longer needed to track)

• Reading (40+ days or more)

• and four or five other habits

But here’s the catch…

• Some days I could only put the bed together.

• Sometimes my meditation was not good.

• Often I only read a few pages.

But it doesn’t matter, because, first of all, I did it every single day. Consistently. And I didn’t stop.

It may not sound like much of a challenge, but imagine what it’s like to tie together weeks and weeks of things you used to struggle with. How else do you think I made over 100 posts in a few years? Like compound interest, efforts add up over time to create something far greater than the sum of its parts.

This is the secret sauce. That’s why the top 1 percent perform at a level that we earthlings think is impossible.

Before Michael Phelps won the most gold medals in history, he had over a 10-year streak of success where he never missed a scheduled day of training. Don’t be fooled, his few days of training weren’t very good. But he showed up anyway. It is so simple.

Don’t break the chain.

Let’s say you want to learn programming for your startup, but are overwhelmed with what you need to know. This is completely normal. Start with small pieces. If you learn programming, rain or shine, hell or flood, 365 days in a row without breaking the chains, you will make progress. Period. Even if you consider yourself well below average in the beginning. Just an hour a day, that’s almost 400 hours of sequential programming in a year. How well could you get something with 400 hours?

It doesn’t matter what field, pursuit, or project. Consistency over time is a skill.