Background

I came across a post by a foreign blogger who mentioned a line he once heard:

“If you get 1% better every day, then a year later your life will be 38 times better than it is now.”

He thought that made a lot of sense, so he decided to set aside $30 every week as a small fund for tiny upgrades that could make life better.

His process was simple: every Saturday morning, he would think about what had been bothering him lately, and whether it was something he could fix within $30. Then he would act on it right away.

For example, he once realized there was only one charger in the house, and it stayed in the bedroom. Charging things was always inconvenient. So he used the fund to buy another charger. After that, he could sit in the living room and watch TV while charging his phone without any hassle. Another time, he bought a small key holder, and from then on he stopped losing his keys.

Of course, not every improvement required spending money.

At one point, he realized he used to tell his wife, “If you want to buy something, just text me and remind me.” But that was not actually convenient.

So he created a shared online grocery list with her. After that, whenever they went shopping, they only had to open the list and buy things one by one. It became much easier, and they forgot far fewer things.

He kept doing this throughout the year and ended up making more than 70 small improvements. His biggest takeaway was simple: life really did become easier.

Slowly, he realized that the important part was not the money itself, but the mindset behind it: a habit of asking every week, “What small thing could make life better?”

And he found that making life better does not always require a dramatic overhaul. Sometimes all it takes is time, plus one small adjustment.

Honestly, I found that deeply inspiring. To me, it feels like another form of long-term thinking.

When you learn to solve the small frictions in daily life one by one, you are quietly improving your state of mind through accumulation.

You begin to feel very clearly that you do have the ability to change your life, and that you do have the energy to live it with care. Little by little, you also realize that doing this well does not require some huge effort.