Incremental Gains Quotes

We gauge what we think is possible by what we know from experience, and our acceptance of scientific insights, in particular, is incremental, gained one experience at a time.

For every incremental gain in men’s ability to deceive women, women evolve comparable incremental gains in their ability to detect deception.

Even earthquakes are the consequence of tensions built up over long spans of time, imperceptibly, incrementally. You don't notice the buildup, just the release. You see a sick person, an old person, a dying person, the sight sinks in, and somewhere down the road you change your life. In movies and novels, people change suddenly and permanently, which is convenient and dramatic but not much like life, where you gain distance on something, relapse, resolve, try again, and move along in stops, starts, and stutters. Change is mostly slow. In my life, there had been transformative events, and I'd had a few sudden illuminations and crises, crossed a rubicon or two, but mostly I'd had the incremental.

the only way to determine the timetable for a project is by gaining experience on that same project. This needn't be a paradox if you practice incremental development, repeating the following steps. Check requirements Analyze risk Design, implement, integrate Validate with the users

The thing is, incremental daily progress (negative or positive) is what actually causes transformation. A figurative drip, drip, drip. Showing up, every single day, gaining in strength, organizing for the long haul, building connection, laying track — this subtle but difficult work is how culture changes.

Inner Awareness is often gained in incremental steps at first. The distraction of the perceived physical world dictates this. However, once one realizes this process, a new skill in “awareness recognition” emerges… and like riding a bike for the first time, one peddles faster, gaining confidence in their new skill, a skill that will take them much farther than any distraction previously experienced

Your challenge as #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention.I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you being to see it, you'll need sunglasses to combat the glare. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds. These words were not invented for an incremental life. "Success" and "failure" serve a world that is black-and-white. And as I said before, it's all just kinda grey.

But sound Bible study is rooted in a celebration of delayed gratification. Gaining Bible literacy requires allowing our study to have a cumulative effect—across weeks, months, years—so that the interrelation of one part of Scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully, like a dust cloth slipping inch by inch from the face of a masterpiece. The Bible does not want to be neatly packaged into three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day increments. It does not want to be reduced to truisms and action points. It wants to introduce dissonance into your thinking, to stretch your understanding. It wants to reveal a mosaic of the majesty of God one passage at a time, one day at a time, across a lifetime. By all means, bring eagerness to your study time. Yes, bring hunger. But certainly bring patience—come ready to study for the long term.

1. Connect with Your Why Start by identifying your key motivations. Why do you want to reach your goal in the first place? Why is it important personally? Get a notebook or pad of paper and list all the key motivations. But don’t just list them, prioritize them. You want the best reasons at the top of your list. Finally, connect with these motivations both intellectually and emotionally. 2. Master Your Motivation There are four key ways to stay motivated as you reach for your goals: Identify your reward and begin to anticipate it. Eventually, the task itself can become its own reward this way. Recognize that installing a new habit will probably take longer than a few weeks. It might even take five or six months. Set your expectations accordingly. Gamify the process with a habit app or calendar chain. As Dan Sullivan taught me, measure the gains, not the gap. Recognize the value of incremental wins. 3. Build Your Team It’s almost always easier to reach a goal if you have friends on the journey. Intentional relationships provide four ingredients essential for success: learning, encouragement, accountability, and competition. There are at least seven kinds of intentional relationships that can help you grow and reach your goals: ​‣ ​Online communities ​‣ ​Running and exercise groups ​‣ ​Masterminds ​‣ ​Coaching and mentoring circles ​‣ ​Reading and study groups ​‣ ​Accountability groups ​‣ ​Close friendships If you can’t find a group you need, don’t wait. Start your own.

Chinese seek victory not in a decisive battle but through incremental moves designed to gradually improve their position. To quote Kissinger again: “Rarely did Chinese statesmen risk the outcome of a conflict on a single all-or-nothing clash: elaborate multi-year maneuvers were closer to their style. Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage.”48 In an instructive analogy, David Lai illustrates this by comparing the game of chess with its Chinese equivalent, weiqi—often referred to as go. In chess, players seek to dominate the center and conquer the opponent. In weiqi, players seek to surround the opponent. If the chess master sees five or six moves ahead, the weiqi master sees twenty or thirty. Attending to every dimension in the broader relationship with the adversary, the Chinese strategist resists rushing prematurely toward victory, instead aiming to build incremental advantage. “In the Western tradition, there is a heavy emphasis on the use of force; the art of war is largely limited to the battlefields; and the way to fight is force on force,” Lai explains. By contrast, “The philosophy behind go is to compete for relative gain rather than seeking complete annihilation of the opponent forces.” In a wise reminder, Lai warns that “It is dangerous to play go with the chess mindset. One can become overly aggressive so that he will stretch his force thin and expose his vulnerable parts in the battlefields.

Europe and America’s populist right wants to turn the clock back to the days when men were men and the West ruled. It is prepared to sacrifice the gains of globalisation – and risk conflict with China – to protect jobs that have already vanished. Populists have little to say about automation, though it is a far larger threat to people’s jobs than trade. The left urges incremental steps such as better worker training, smarter schools and infrastructure. These are worthy causes. But they are a bit like prescribing aspirin for cancer.

trade a short-term, incremental gain for a potential longer-term, game-changing upside?

Clearly you cannot manufacture more information than the past can deliver; if you buy one hundred copies of The New York Times, I am not too certain that it would help you gain incremental knowledge of the future. We just don’t know how much information there is in the past.

The noble white labor archetype did not give white workers immunity from capitalism. It could not, in itself break monopolies, alleviate white poverty in Appalachia or the South, nor bring a decent wage to immigrant ghettos in the North. But the model for America's original identity politics was set. Black lives literally did not matter and could be cast aside altogether as the price for even incremental gains for the white masses.

Of course, I hope to identify the Micawbers in future but, even if I don’t, a rigorous regime of incremental investment, with drawdowns conditional upon clearly agreed project milestones, will better protect all concerned.

Oh, human certainty, knowing that nothing has happened in vain, that nothing was happening in vain, although disappointment seems to be all, and no way leads out of the thicket; oh, certainty, knowing that even when the way turns to evil the knowledge gained by experience has grown, remaining as an increment of knowledge in the world, remaining as the cool-bright reflection of that estate beyond chance to which the earthly action of man can penetrate whenever it conforms to the necessity determined by perception and attains in this way a first illumination of earthbound life and its herdlike sleep.

Do an unsentimental evaluation of what resources and staff you have versus how much you really need. There is usually more performance and efficiency to be gained from your existing staff, before you take the path of least resistance—unplanned, incremental growth, leading to mediocrity and waste. One of your biggest responsibilities is to stop that incremental attitude in its tracks.

When deal-making, ask yourself: Can I trade a short-term, incremental gain for a potential longer-term, game-changing upside? Is there an element here that might be far more valuable in 5 to 10 years (e.g., ebook rights 10 years ago)?

The payments system is the heart of the financial services industry, and most people who work in banking are engaged in servicing payments. But this activity commands both low priority and low prestige within the industry. Competition between firms generally promotes innovation and change, but a bank can gain very little competitive advantage by improving its payment systems, since the customer experience is the result more of the efficiency of the system as a whole than of the efficiency of any individual bank. Incentives to speed payments are weak. Incrementally developed over several decades, the internal systems of most banks creak: it is easier, and implies less chance of short-term disruption, to add bits to what already exists than to engage in basic redesign. The interests of the leaders of the industry have been elsewhere, and banks have tended to see new technology as a means of reducing costs rather than as an opportunity to serve consumer needs more effectively. Although the USA is a global centre for financial innovation in wholesale financial markets, it is a laggard in innovation in retail banking, and while Britain scores higher, it does not score much higher. Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclays (who resigned in 1998, when he could not stop the rise of the trading culture at the bank), described the state of payment systems in this way: ‘the systems architecture at the typical big bank, especially if it has grown through merger and acquisition, has departed from the Palladian villa envisaged by its original designers and morphed into a gothic house of horrors, full of turrets, broken glass and uneven paving.

This is an age greedy for instant solutions and rapid results but temple skills are not grown overnight nor produced at a weekend workshop, but slowly and incrementally gained as a tree maturing with time and season.

Besides making incremental dietary changes over the next twenty-one days and beyond, we’ll delve into the heart of your cravings, addictions, and habits; your ways of dealing with stress; your most deep-seated hopes and dreams for your body; and maybe even your fears and doubts about not being able to control your eating. We’ll take a bold look at how you fully inhabit your body and life. When you deal with the real issues that drive your weight gain, you don’t just lose weight, you get your life back.

Every change we make can be an incremental gain to create a ripple effect in the universe. It can be a ripple, which gains momentum and creates an authenticity movement and gradually demands a revolution of authentic change.

Expectations tend to rise with accomplishment. The better you’re performing, the more you demand of yourself and the less you notice incremental gains. Appreciating progress depends on remembering how your past self would see your current achievements. If you knew five years ago what you’d accomplish now, how proud would you have been?

Since the Firm’s IPO, the Founder and the partners have realized that the listed market seems to value more highly the stable, recurring management fees that the Firm brings in, come rain or shine—the two percent—over the larger, supposedly more volatile performance fees that crystallize when investment gains are monetized—the twenty percent. The stock price is largely driven by a regular stream of management fees under long-term contracts, and as assets under management grow for the Firm, the stock’s attractiveness to public market investors increases because this fee pile grows alongside the assets. Of course, there is a strong track record of delivering performance fees on top, because the funds perform well, but these are incremental to the equity story; they do not underpin it. For the stock market, the Two is mission-critical. The Twenty is important, but it is not taken for granted.

Monday, November 29 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. —Psalm 119:105 (ESV) Here you go!” my twenty-two-year-old son, John, said cheerfully, handing me a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Since he began working he has also begun paying me rent. He prefers to pay in cash, I think because it is concrete evidence he is contributing to the family. We both enjoy the monthly ritual. This has been a long, long time coming. There were the years in which John’s anxiety triggered rages, then the years when he was depressed and didn’t leave the house except to walk the dog or go to therapy. There were long stretches of time when there seemed to be no path forward. Through those I learned that my inability to see how life could improve meant only one thing: that I couldn’t see the way through. Oddly, in retrospect, I can’t see the path we took, either. I think that’s because John’s progress was so incremental, each step forward so infinitely small as to be almost unnoticeable. It may also have something to do with the fact that the “lamp to my feet” that lit my path was much like the handheld oil lamps of biblical times, casting only enough light to illuminate my next stumbling step. Yet now my son is gainfully employed, a taxpaying citizen. He does not earn a lot, but he works hard and his boss likes him. Someday, I think, he will probably be able to afford his own apartment. I’m not worried about when that happens. There are those who might argue John “should” be doing X or Y or Z. For me, those “shoulds” don’t matter: I’ve learned we can’t move forward from where we wish we were. We can only move forward from where we are now. Lord, let Your word illuminate my next step. And then the one after. And the one after that. —Julia Attaway Digging Deeper: Psalm 44:18

every search has incrementally a higher probability of yielding a result,

The Wrights used incrementalization to break the big problem of heavier-than-air flight into smaller component pieces. Then, they quickly advanced their understanding bit by bit. Each step supported each subsequent step of inquiry. They believed they couldn’t think their way to the right answer; instead, they experimented relentlessly with great frequency and at low cost. The Wright brothers were unabating experimenters. Their experiments included model gliders flown like kites, months spent with gliders at Kitty Hawk modifying structures and flight controls while gaining flying experience, a self-fabricated wind tunnel in which they could test scale models of airfoils to better understand how to generate lift, etc.

Oh, human certainty, knowing that nothing has happened in vain, that nothing was happening in vain, although disappointment seems to be all, and no way leads out of the thicket; oh, certainty, knowing that even when the way turns to evil the knowledge gained by experience has grown, remaining as an increment of knowledge in the world, remaining as the cool-bright reflection of the estate beyond chance to which the earthly action of man can penetrate whenever it conforms to the necessity determined by perception and attains in this way a first illumination of earthbound life and its herdlike sleep. Oh, certainty full of trust, not streaming hither from heaven but arising as on it—, then must not fulfillment of certain trust, if fulfillment be at all possible, be realized here on earth? the necessary is always consummated in the simple way of earth, the streaming round of questions will always find its closure only upon earth, even through the perceptive task may concern itself with uniting the separate spheres of the universe, still there is no genuine task without earthly roots, none possible of solution without an earthly starting point.

top-down is usually irreversible, so mistakes tend to stick, whereas bottom-up is gradual and incremental, with creation and destruction along the way,

RBG’s image as a moderate was clinched in March 1993, in a speech she gave at New York University known as the Madison Lecture. Sweeping judicial opinions, she told the audience, packed with many of her old New York friends, were counterproductive. Popular movements and legislatures had to first spur social change, or else there would be a backlash to the courts stepping in. As case in point, RBG chose an opinion that was very personal to plenty of people listening: Roe v. Wade. The right had been aiming to overturn Roe for decades, and they’d gotten very close only months before the speech with Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Sandra Day O’Connor had instead brokered a compromise, allowing states to put restrictions on abortion as long as they didn’t pose an “undue burden” on women—or ban it before viability. Neither side was thrilled, but Roe was safe, at least for the moment. Just as feminists had caught their breath, RBG declared that Roe itself was the problem. If only the court had acted more slowly, RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.” This analysis remains controversial among historians, who say the political process of abortion access had stalled before Roe. Meanwhile, the record shows that there was no overnight eruption after Roe. In 1975, two years after the decision, no senator asked Supreme Court nominee John Paul Stevens about abortion. But Republicans, some of whom had been pro-choice, soon learned that being the anti-abortion party promised gains. And even if the court had taken another path, women’s sexual liberation and autonomy might have still been profoundly unsettling. Still, RBG stuck to her guns, in the firm belief that lasting change is incremental. For the feminists and lawyers listening to her Madison Lecture, RBG’s argument felt like a betrayal. At dinner after the lecture, Burt Neuborne remembers, other feminists tore into their old friend. “They felt that Roe was so precarious, they were worried such an expression from Ruth would lead to it being overturned,” he recalls. Not long afterward, when New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested to Clinton that RBG be elevated to the Supreme Court, the president responded, “The women are against her.” Ultimately, Erwin Griswold’s speech, with its comparison to Thurgood Marshall, helped convince Clinton otherwise. It was almost enough for RBG to forgive Griswold for everything else.

Can I trade a short-term, incremental gain for a potential longer-term, game-changing upside?

they tend to be very powerful. Their abilities offer incremental advantage every turn so they favour a long game and a stalemated board. As they are attackable directly, like players, then playing one without adequate blockers will see them getting killed before you can gain sufficient benefit.

The underlying logic was that increments in performance could be achieved only with proportional increments in resources—the same inherent logic guiding most companies’ view of performance gains.

It’s the habit of process change—the undertaking of numerous, sustained changes over time—that counts. So often leaders try to change a business overnight by taking a single, bold action. Process improvement is less dramatic and glamorous than that. It’s a change in mind-set and operational norms that takes months or even years to establish, and that yields incremental, accumulated gains years into the future (remember that the compounding effect of 3 percent versus 1 percent annual productivity is huge over time). Process improvement is also about yielding some of your authority as a leader and empowering others closest to the action to improve the real work, incrementally, day after day. Their insights, judgments, and decisions large and small, compounded over a period of years, move the organization forward.

We find that often the only way to determine the timetable for a project is by gaining experience on that same project. This needn’t be a paradox if you practice incremental development, repeating the following steps with very thin slices of functionality: Check requirements Analyze risk (and prioritize riskiest items earlier) Design, implement, integrate Validate with the users