improvement pill here today I'm going to share with you a story and hopefully by
listening to this story you'll get a glimpse of a certain mindset that the
majority of the most successful people out there have for a long long period of
time the professional British Cycling team also known as Team Sky was regarded
as one of the worst teams in the world prior to 2012 in its entire 76 year
history of competing in the Olympics they were only able to win a single gold
medal it was so bad that one of the most popular bike manufacturing companies
refused to let them ride their bikes for races because they were scared that
people would associate Team Sky with their bikes so in 2002 the Brits decided
to hire a guy named Sir Dave Brailsford to manage the team Brailsford had an
interesting background he was a former professional cycler who holds an MBA he
decided to incorporate a business concept called the theory of marginal
gains to the team the theory of marginal gains is very simple it's the idea that
if you simply improve every aspect of the business
every little cog and wheel by the flattest percentage if you could speed
up manufacturing of products by just 1% if you could improve the quality of
products by just 1% if you could cut costs by just 1% there would be a
tremendous amount of improvement a whole lot more than just 3% but just how
effective was this concept in the world of cycling
well Team Sky started improving on a variety of things they found tires that
were a tiny bit lighter they found bike seats that were slightly
more comfortable they learned how to clean hard-to-reach places on their
bikes and reduce the amount of dust in the parts they hired a surgeon to teach
their team how to wash hands properly and they even decided not to shake any
hands prior to the Olympics to reduce the chances of getting sick they bought
mattresses and pillows that were slightly better to sleep on they
optimized the nutrition for the riders so it was slightly better for racing
they even split tested massage oils and found out which one was most effective
for recovery time these changes on their own were by no means a lot the tyres
were only a percent or two lighter the pillows were only a percent or two more
comfortable but they made hundreds of little changes just like this
random things that no other team was even paying attention to so did any of
this even work well in the 2008 Beijing Olympics Team Sky won 7 out of the 10
gold medals available for track cycling they repeated this achievement and won 7
more gold medals in the following London Olympics they've learned four out of the
last five toward the France which is something a British person has never won
before it was a phenomenal success what does this story have to do with how
incredibly successful people think ? well the most successful people on this
planet believe in the theory of marginal games I would say the most common habit
you'll notice about successful people is the fact that they are avid learners
they are always seeking more information many of them read many of them attend
seminars and if you think about what this accomplishes you'll realise by
learning every single day you are technically improving your knowledge by
a small small percent this small improvement in knowledge sparks many
other small changes that they can make to improve their lives they figure out
little things they can do to improve their business their mental health their
fitness their craft and all of these one percents they add up so for those of you
that want to become successful this is something that you must internalize this
is one of the goals I have for this channel because almost all of my videos
have information that you can use to improve your life ever so slightly and
you keep improving just a little bit every single day
you can pass most people around you because most people are either not
improving or they're actually doing the opposite
they're deteriorating so remember guys to take that improvement pill every
single day