1% to Greatness

How Small, Consistent Improvements Create Massive Long-Term Impact

Introduction

Continuous improvement is the hidden engine behind long-term success. The idea that small, consistent efforts lead to transformative results isn’t new, but it is critically underleveraged, especially in technical leadership roles such as CTOs or Engineering Managers. James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” illustrates this beautifully through the story of the British cycling team, whose strategy of marginal gains — tiny, 1% improvements — led to world domination in their sport.

In leadership, the principle is even more vital. As one of my previous CEOs once said: “What I know now, won’t be good enough in a year’s time.” This essentially creates two layers:

Layer 0 — Maintenance: Just like a house that needs ongoing maintenance to keep the lights on, we need to ensure we allocate time to keeping ourselves in the best shape.

Layer 1 — Investment: Beyond “keeping the lights on,” there is the vital layer of self-investment — improving our tools, systems, knowledge, and skills to make tomorrow easier and better.

Several thought leaders, from Peter Drucker to Reid Hoffman, emphasise the necessity of constant learning and reinvention. In the rapidly evolving world of technology, standing still is falling behind.

Reserved Time: Structured Investment in Growth

One practical approach is to reserve a time each week for personal growth (I recommend an hour for each of the categories below). I create recurring calendar invites to ensure these habits don’t slip through the cracks.

Putting everything we want to do down in our calendar forces prioritisation and reveals just how little discretionary time we actually have.

Here are the main areas I focus on each week:

• Master Tooling: Master the tools you use.
• Automate Manual Tasks: Build systems to automate repeated manual tasks.
• Index Second Brain: Index knowledge for fast retrieval.
• Increase Maturity: Create reusable assets and processes.
• Build AI Agents: Offload repetitive cognitive and boilerplate tasks, as well as augment your generative ability for 100x productivity.
• Improve Knowledge: Expand your knowledge in your subject areas.
• Update Brag Sheet: Track achievements for visibility and self-assessment.

Master Tooling

Spend time becoming highly proficient with your existing tools. This means learning shortcuts, deepening your understanding, and evaluating new tools to replace your current stack.

Avoid constant switching unless gains are significant enough to outweigh the drop in productivity. For example, despite the buzz around Cursor, I’ve stuck with Visual Studio Code, confident that significant advantages will be back-ported soon enough.

Automate Manual Tasks

During the week, I keep a log of repetitive tasks that could be automated. Tools like n8n make it easy to automate workflows, from notification pipelines to AI-driven content generation.

Some examples include setting up automated reports, customer onboarding sequences, and sending me daily briefings of topics that interest me and that I want to keep up to date with.

There are many ways to automate tasks, though, and I encourage every team to adopt a '1% to greatness' mentality. In your work cycles, always include one thing that automates or improves how you do something.

Index Second Brain

Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain” teaches the value of an external system for storing and organising knowledge. Your mind becomes the index to this “second brain,” which is essential in complex domains like technology.

I prefer Obsidian for its local-first, Markdown-based flexibility. My organisational method of choice is the PARA system — organising notes into Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives — to make retrieval effortless.

I also have a notes app where I write down all my notes for the week in an unstructured way, so I can quickly get thoughts down and then organise them into my PARA structure.

Increasing Maturity

Maturing is closely linked to maintaining a second brain. It’s about writing documentation, processes, and training material so that the next time you come to do something is always easier than the time before.

At first, it can be harder, as you need to do the work and then put in the work to write it down for the next time it comes around. Each iteration after this, though, should get easier, creating a compounding time-saving effect over the long term.

Ideally, you should look to always do work generically up front and then apply it to the particular context or company it is for.

Build AI Agents

Leveraging AI agents such as GPTs can dramatically ease repetitive cognitive tasks, such as writing blogs, user stories, reviews, or even researching.

For example, by providing a custom AI agent with the raw information of what you want to say in an email and having it write it in a style and tone that still sounds like you, whilst you don’t have to worry about crafting perfect English, can significantly improve your efficiency.

You might also decide to create a research agent that searches through documents or materials you provide it with for information.

For more advanced agents, Anthropic’s guide on Building Effective Agents outlines best practices for creating helpful AI workflows and more complex agents.

Improve Knowledge

Continuous learning isn’t optional for technical leaders. I split my weekly learning into two main streams: people leadership skills and technical expertise. Allocating structured time ensures you stay current with new tools, methodologies, and leadership practices — and it sharpens the edge you bring to your teams.

If you are looking for some learning paths or ways to record what you want to learn and have learnt, https://roadmap.sh/ is a great tool for this.

One key distinction in my mind between someone who is mid-level and senior in their field is that a senior has their finger on the pulse and is constantly bringing new ideas from outside the company into the company. This allows you to start upskilling everyone around you.

Update Brag Sheet

Keeping a “brag sheet” — a running document of achievements, project outcomes, user impact, and success metrics — is invaluable. It makes your performance reviews easier and provides a morale boost when you see your progress documented over time. (Don’t forget to create an agent to take your brag sheet and write your review for you.)

It is also very useful to keep a log of your accomplishments and key numbers, such as the savings you have made, the impact your product has had, the performance increase, and the size of the budget you managed. This is something I regret not doing earlier in my career, and I have worked on some great projects where I have forgotten some of the key details over time.

Daily Habits: Learning by Osmosis

Learning by Osmosis

Your environment shapes your learning. Tools like daily.dev fill new browser tabs with curated tech news, passively keeping you updated. Physical reminders, such as cheat sheets or posters, also keep essential concepts at the edge of your awareness.

Feeds

Setting up easy-access feeds on platforms like X, Reddit, YouTube Shorts, or Discord enables quick bursts of learning during idle moments. This turns potential ‘doomscrolling’ time into a lightweight educational experience.

Conclusion

Mastery isn’t built overnight; it’s the product of countless small improvements. By dedicating consistent time to refining tools, automating tasks, investing in knowledge systems, and leveraging emerging technologies, technical leaders can ensure they’re not only keeping up but actively shaping the future.

The journey to greatness is paved 1% at a time.