Some of the best advice I've ever received is, "Don't overestimate what you can do in a day, but don't underestimate what you can do in a year, never mind a decade," and I think it's relevant to your comment and this article.
We live in a "success now" culture. It's almost anathema to be willing to be bad at something long enough to become good at it. If you haven't demonstrated an aptitude for something, don't touch it.
But the compounding effect of even very slight changes over years can change everything.
You can't double your performance overnight. But if you get 1% better every week for 70 weeks, you can double your performance that way, and you're not even a year and a half in.
So can you start sleeping an hour earlier? Not overnight, no. But can you get 1% better at it per week for a few months by practicing and succeeding at small changes? Yeah, you probably can.
We live in a "success now" culture. It's almost anathema to be willing to be bad at something long enough to become good at it. If you haven't demonstrated an aptitude for something, don't touch it.
But the compounding effect of even very slight changes over years can change everything.
You can't double your performance overnight. But if you get 1% better every week for 70 weeks, you can double your performance that way, and you're not even a year and a half in.
So can you start sleeping an hour earlier? Not overnight, no. But can you get 1% better at it per week for a few months by practicing and succeeding at small changes? Yeah, you probably can.