As the excitement of Team GB’s mesmerising success in the 2012 Olympics begins to settle, commentators are talking about the Philosophy of Marginal Gains which played a pivotal role in their training — and how we can all apply these techniques to improve our lives.

 

The man who coined this phrase was David Brailsford, Perfomance Director of the British cycling team, who explains: ‘We’ve got this saying, “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains”. It means taking the 1% from everything you do; finding a 1% margin for improvement in everything you do. That’s what we try to do from the mechanics upwards.’

 

In his guidance on using Buddhism in daily life, SGI President Daisaku Ikeda uses a similar concept to encourage people to make steady improvements.  He writes: ‘We mustn’t compare ourselves to others. What is important is that we strive to be better today than we were yesterday and be better tomorrow than we are today – that we advance, even if by only a single step, a single millimetre.’ (SGI Newsletter No. 5047, 27 February 2002)

 

In his article, Dan Byrne explains how the ‘compounding’ of these small advances can double our success rates.

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