What I've Been Thinking About
🐛 Inchworm of Improvement
I recently came across this interesting graphic that describes the process of improvement. It's called the inchworm because our improvement resembles the movement of the inchworm. It continuously alternates between extending its body to push its head out further, followed by pulling its rear up towards its head to begin the process over again.
When viewing our improvement in any skill, game, or even productivity, we're continuously making improvements to our A-game and our C-game. The levels of our A-game and C-game make up the ceiling and floor of our range of expected outcomes.
If we have a high ceiling and a low floor, then we will have greater variability. Greater variability isn't so bad in and of itself, but we're human and we typically don't handle this variability well. Having wide discrepancies between our best and our worst typically leads to frustration and a lack of confidence in our abilities. We will tend to identify with our best performances, yet focus on our worst, and generally look for excuses and others to blame to explain this gap.
Steady improvement over an extended period of time is largely a mental game against ourselves. It can be a massive win in our mental game to make consistent improvements to our C-game.
And what's the quickest way to raise our floor? When it comes to games and sports it's working on our fundamentals. When it comes to day-to-day productivity, the fundamentals are our habits and more specifically our routines. By intentionally designing and following through on our routines, we raise the floor of our days.
It's important to view this inch-worm graph and to think probabilistically about our gameplay or performance. Any given day we will have a broad range of outcomes with varying degrees of likelihood. It's also important to keep in mind that earlier events affect the probability of subsequent events. Each time we make a C-game quality decision, we put ourselves in the beginnings of a hole that we're counting on our future self to pull us out of. Each time we make an A-game quality decision, we make it that much easier for our future self to continue executing at that level.
This is why we should put an outsized focus on the beginnings. The first two hours of the day, the first quarter of our game, the early game. If we can ensure the beginning looks like our A-game, we set ourselves up to finish that way.
When it comes to improving our A-game or our C-game, I think it's much more valuable to focus on our C-game. Why? Making continued improvements to our C-game over time requires the habit of self-reflection. This is what I believe separates the pros from amateurs. Amateurs can improve their A-game without a strong understanding of the underlying metagame of improvement. But in order to reliably improve our C-game, it requires us to continuously take stock of our weaknesses, drop our ego to see our skill levels as they actually are, and put a plan in place to address the specific weaknesses.
It's not sexy working on our weaknesses and our C-game, but not only is it the highest leverage way to improve, but it helps contribute to making the journey as smooth and as enjoyable as possible.