The 1% Rule

James Clear's Atomic Habits made a simple math fact famous: if you get 1% better each day, you end the year about 37 times better than where you started. Get 1% worse each day and you drop to nearly zero.

This is why most people give up on new habits. They expect visible results in days or weeks and see nothing. Clear calls this the "Valley of Disappointment" — the gap between what you expect and what you get in the early stages.