I ended last post with the notion that one is always better than none.
Unless, it is dysentery, which has killed presidents. Uhm, at least one:
Uhm, at least one: Thomas Jefferson appears to have died of amoebic dysentery.
James K. Polk, died of cholera and “debilitating diarrhea” a few weeks after leaving the White House. That’s almost the same. And Zachary Taylor… well there are theories, some say he simply died because he ate too many cherries. Eating the wrong stuff seems to have been a problem for a long time. Several Presidents, including James Monroe and Andrew Jackson, are believed to have succumbed to tuberculosis, which can be transmitted via air or food. And Ulyssess Grant? He just smoked too many cigars. I argue since he had a cigar it his mouth at all times, he basically died by eating them by the dozens.
This tangent is brought to you by the fabulous book “How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country” by Daniel O’Brien. I just finished it. It’s hilarious, get the audiobook.
Okay, getting back to One is better than none.
It means writing one sentence is better than writing none. One sentence allows me to come back to something vs. not writing at all. If you save one dollar a day it is obviously better than saving nothing.
This one dollar helps you to build up a buffer eventually. But this also implies that you do it regularly and don’t spend this dollar.
This all comes back to my last post: Building up buffers. If every day, you do 1% more than you needed to do, you’ll be able to build up a buffer over time.
In fact, if you keep at it, you’ll be able to reach critical mass. Not you, I mean the thing you are working on…
It’s only literally you, if every day, you eat 1% more than you should. Critical mass, in this case, would be the mass at which you would stop moving because it is too hard. You would burn less calories and gain more weight even faster. And now you’d even have more time eating. A vicious cycle in this case. So I hope it’s not you. If it is you, try eating 1% less and move 1% more every day. I mean it. You are my hero if you decide to do it now (send me an email!).
So back to reaching a critical mass that has nothing to do with weight but with momentum. Let’s take something simple, unrelated to reality.
Let’s say your house is built entirely below the water level of an adjacent river.
You already have 100 gallons of water in your basement add 10 gallons get added every day. Initially, you can only remove ten gallons per day. Thus, by doing this every day you can, at least, prevent the rest of the house from flooding. But it will not get you anywhere.
So how long will it take you to empty the basement, if you just remove 11 gallons every day? Yes, hundred days. That’s simple.
But here comes the critical mass effect.
If you just work 10 days at a rate of removing 11 gallons every day, you’ll gain yourself 1 day of flooding until you are back to 100 gallons again. So, if all that you can manage to do on this one day is reducing the rate of flooding to 9 gallons a day (by patching it up for example), you’ll have the house dry on day 61 instead.
But it goes on: Now with a rate of 9 gallons added and 11 gallons removed you only need to work five days to gain one day buffer. Now you can reduce the flooding rate for another gallon and now you’ll even be done on day 50!
I guess you can see the compounding factor of this tiny 1%. So get at it!