Small Change – Big Impact
The biggest mistake people make in the New Year? Thinking results require an overhaul of their entire life. However, this will often set you up for failure and frustration. For a more effective impact, we’re drawing on a really insightful example.
Our tale of incredible effective behaviour change comes from surprisingly from the world of elite cycling. When British Cycling, and later Team Sky in the Tour de France, shifted their approach, they did not search for a single breakthrough tactic. Instead, they focused on improving everything that mattered by a very small amount. Bike fit, aerodynamics, recovery routines, sleep quality, nutrition timing, hygiene, training structure, and even travel logistics were all examined. None of these changes were dramatic on their own, but together they created a decisive competitive advantage and resulted in the team winning the Tour. This approach became known as the idea of marginal gains.
What made this strategy effective was not intensity, but consistency. Each small improvement was easy to sustain. Over time, those 1% shifts accumulated and fundamentally changed outcomes. The lesson is simple but often overlooked: progress rarely comes from one big effort. It comes from repeatedly doing small things well, long enough for the effects to compound.
In this season of life, willpower-based overhauls tend to fail because the margin for error is smaller and the load is higher. Sustainable change comes from persistence and accumulation, not perfection. Small adjustments, applied across multiple areas, create momentum without overwhelm.
Let’s share some example of how you could apply this approach:
- Improving protein intake slightly at each meal rather than chasing a perfect daily target, which supports satiety, muscle retention, and blood sugar stability without dietary rigidity.
- Adding a short walk or extra movement opportunity into the days where you already have a full schedule, increasing energy expenditure without increasing stress.
- Making small sleep-supportive changes such as earlier screens-off time or a consistent wake-up routine, which quietly improves appetite regulation and recovery.
- Reducing decision fatigue by standardizing one or two meals per day, freeing mental energy while improving nutritional consistency.
- Introducing brief stress-regulation habits, such as five minutes of breathing or decompression time, which lowers the likelihood of emotional eating and improves adherence overall.
None of these actions are transformative on their own. Their power lies in being repeatable. When small, manageable changes stack up over time, they shift the trajectory entirely. Progress is not built through extremes. It is built through accumulation.
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