The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love with the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

• Your time is now. Stop acting like you have all the time in the world.
• If you keep waiting to get started, you’ll wake up one day and wonder where your life went.
• Manufacture urgency – urgency is not natural – it has to be created and recreated e.g. cut your target completion date in half and start now.
• The amateur sits around waiting to be inspired – the pro creates inspiration.

• Indecision is a big dream killer.
• Too much choice means you don’t get to focus on what is really valuable, on what is really important.
• Kill thinking you can have everything, kill thinking you don’t have to make a choice.
• Instead of opting for choice, choose. Instead of allowing yourself options, decide what’s most meaningful to you – CHOOSE.

• A lack of vision and clarity means you end up serving the dreams of others.
• Create a vision so big and bold you feel electrified and uneasy. Captivate yourself, captivate your emotions. It should resonate deeply and move you – you should be able to touch it, smell it, live it – it should bring you to tears. You should feel an energetic shift as you think and talk about, like experiencing your dream holiday, like testing your dream car.

• Growth requires constant challenge, something that stretches you, that pushes you to the edge of your perceived limits.
• Without challenge we wither away, we fade. We become complacent, stuck, bored, apathetic. Our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacity – no longer being tested – start to suck the life force out of us.
• Doing the same thing and expecting change is madness.

• Don’t allow your potential to be wasted –take action, implement what you read and learn.
• Motivational conferences and reading alone won’t make it happen. Move from KNOWING to DOING (the endless reps, practice, challenge – this is when it starts to get hard – and where most people quit ) to BEING (where the magic happens ).

• Keep heading towards your goal no matter the obstacles and rejections.
• Persistence kicks in when that initial high of doing something new wears off. People fail because they don’t stick with the process after the good feeling fades, and through the hard times.
• Know that you will face obstacles, sleepless nights, existential crises and moments that bring you to your knees – that’s part of the path.
• Behind every overnight success are years of effort, struggle, and rejection and consistent action.

Fall in love with delayed gratification.
A farmer doesn’t plant seeds and wake up yelling in frustration the next day that the crop hasn’t bloomed. Instead they trust the process – with sunshine, water, and patience the crops will bear fruit.
Why do some people fail to reach their goals? They expect too much too early and give up at the first sign of struggle – overnight success is a decade in the making.

Maximum Urgency + Maximum Accountability = Maximum Results

• The more successful you are, the higher you get, the more accountability and urgency forms part of your experience.
• Create systems, structures and people to ensure you follow through – this will ensure consistent productivity over the long term.

• Lack of focus is the number 1 obstacle standing between people and their dreams.
• Reaching our goals involves self-control, delayed gratification and ignoring distractions and temptations that can divert us from our path.
• Emails and social media are dream killers – putting you in the driver’s seat for someone else’s vision.
• In a world telling you to choose others, choose yourself. You need to be selfish to achieve success.

• At the core of the 1% Rule is the use of reverse engineering to breakdown any large vision into its smallest common denominator, so tiny that it’s impossible for you to fail to make progress each and every day.
• Process over end result – when you focus on small daily actions tied to a larger vision – you feel inspired rather than overwhelmed.
• Dream big but start small.
• Break your vision down into CORE OUTCOME, CORE PROCESS and 1% (DAILY) PROCESS.

1% progress + daily application(consistency) + persistence (focus) + time (endurance) = SUCCESS

It would actually be more than 1%+1%+1%…= 365% upgrade across a year – due to compounding, we have the potential of advancing by 3700% over a year. That’s a huge upgrade in terms of our health, relationships, finances etc, all by enacting a small 1% daily action, and doing it with consistency, persistence and patience.

• 1% progress – make progress and move forward daily, no matter how small.

• Consistency – do the action daily – each and every day – and see your effort compound over time.

• Persistence – stick with it beyond the initial high and choose it again and again, despite challenges, obstacles and distractions.

• Endurance – stay with the process for long enough to see your dreams come true. Have patience.

• Make a process you love – you will spend more time carrying out the process than in the achievement of the end result so ensure you enjoy it.
• Track your progress – reflection is just as important as action – assess where you are with your goals, and if you are heading in the right direction.
• Celebrate small wins – this will keep you inspired and on track – progress no matter how small is motivating.

“If you don’t fill your day with high-priority items, others will fill your day with low-priority items.” 

“When you experience resistance, laugh at it. Smile at it. See it for what it is—a sign you’re growing.”