"Intellectual Growth should commence at birth and cease only in death". – Albert Einstein

In the short time that I have recently joined Excel Consulting I have witnessed how important it is to continually improve your skills. So often, we can get too comfortable in our situations in the workplace, relationships or just in daily life.

Over time this can lead to disengagement and growth is nearly impossible if you are not engaged and committed to it. - In a business sense, if you are not growing, you’re dying.

The art of continuous improvement is the commitment to making small improvements and changes every day, with the expectation that those small improvements will add up to something significant.

It is so easy to dismiss the value of making slightly better decisions daily. Sticking with the fundamentals is not impressive. Falling in love with boredom is not sexy. Getting one percent better is not going to make headlines.

 

But the important thing is: it works.

Too often we set lofty goals trying to take big leaps in order to accomplish the goal in as little time as possible. Convincing ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it.

Whether our goal is to lose weight, start a new business or travel the world. We can put so much pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvements everyone will talk about overnight.  While this may sound great in theory it often leads to frustration, burnout and eventually failure to accomplish the goal.

Instead we need to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Focusing on making ourselves one percent better each day for year, so you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you are done.

Taking one course isn’t going to make you an expert overnight. But continually putting the skills you’ve learnt to use every day may make you CEO by the end of the year. Now, that’s something worth committing to.

 

So, what’s your next move?