Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Marginal gains are tiny amounts of progress. When you aggregate tiny amounts of progress over time, major improvements happen. At first glance the idea of aggregating marginal gains appears to mirror the idea of progressions. However, although they both provide a process for getting better, the process for each is different.

A progression is the idea of using a step-by-step process to get better by layering on easier skills to achieve a more difficult skill. For example, the progression steps for a handstand push-up are a) normal push-up, b) pike push-up, c) pike push-up with feet on a box, d) wall supported isometric handstand, e) wall supported handstand push-up, f) then finally a handstand push-up.

Progressions are great when there is a difficult skill you must master to get better. But there are times when skill building is not a feasible path to improvement. Either one has already achieved a level of mastery that requires only sharpening not building or one is in a situation where skill building is not a differentiator for performance. It’s in these cases where aggregating marginal gains can still provide a path to get better.

The Process to Aggregate Marginal Gains

The process to aggregate marginal gains starts by deliberately improving small behaviors across multiple domains that impact one’s performance. For example, diet, sleep, mindfulness, self-talk, preparation, recovery, and reflection, among other things.

1. First, let’s say you improve your diet by 1% as well as your sleep by 1% and learn to sustain this improvement.
2. Later you learn how to layer on 1% improvements to your mindfulness and self-talk practices.
3. Then finally you further layer on 1% improvements to your preparation, recovery, and reflection processes.

Each of these small improvements by themselves may not make much of a difference. Yet, when you aggregate them together major improvements to performance start to surface. While it may be hard to get 10% more sleep, it’s not hard to get 1% more. Likewise, it may be hard to improve your diet by 10%, but it’s not hard to improve it by 1%. What’s more, once you get into the habit of aggregating 1% changes in cycles, over time 1% turns into 10%, and 10% turns into 100% after enough improvement cycles.

Indeed, it’s this reduction in difficulty combined with the benefits of making small cyclical changes across multiple areas over time that make the process of aggregating marginal gains so appealing. Therefore, it’s a no brainer to include this process as part of any strategy to improve one’s performance.