The Daily Unlearner by Cammi Pham

The Daily Unlearner by Cammi Pham

Daily Mini

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Outsmarting Overachievers

Just do the bare minimum.

Cammi Pham 🍋's avatar
Cammi Pham 🍋
Aug 19, 2024
∙ Paid
24
15
8
Share

After I wrote my 5% post yesterday, many people brought up the idea of improving 1% every day. While I'm a fan of continuous improvement, even 1% feels like a lot to me. Let's break down the math

The 1% Daily Improvement:

  • In 1 month: 34.78% increase

  • In 1 year: 3778.34% increase

  • In 10 years: 1.97 x 10^15 % increase

Basically, after 1 year, you can be 3778 times better than today. And after 10 years, I don't even know how to read the number anymore.

That looks like way too much. When I wanted to have a post go viral back in the day, I would send just enough additional traffic to keep it in the top Medium articles. Any extra traffic after that would be a waste - I'm already at the top of the chart. It's similar with improvement: we can become better, but we could be too fast for the environment around us to adapt.

For me, 1% daily improvement is a waste of time and energy. Do I want to be 3778x better in a year? No. Improving 1% every single day is exhausting. It's unsustainable for most peop…

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to The Daily Unlearner by Cammi Pham to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Cammi Pham
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture