There is No Day 29

I’ve noticed a key pattern in people who struggle with continuous improvement, or really any new skill, habit, or activity. They simply give up too soon.

Ten or so attempts at a new habit, a stubborn problem, or a new way of working…and they start looking for the exit.

And, to be honest, I’m not exempt. I’ve started and stopped many things after a short time because I didn’t see immediate results. My guess is you have too.

So when I read a motivational post from a neurosurgeon I like to follow, it stung a little. He shared that if there’s any chance at all, even a tiny one, of getting where you want to go, and you never quit trying, the odds of not getting there shrink until they’re basically zero.

For example, think about something that works one time in a hundred. Try it once and you’ll almost certainly miss. Try it 500 times and the chance of missing drops below 1%.

That obviously makes logical sense. But there are a few important twists.

The Catch Nobody Mentions

The post tied this idea to a word I had to look up: ergodic. Here’s the basic idea.

Ergodicity asks whether what happens to a big group on average matches what happens to one person over time. In real life, those two pictures often look very different, especially when one bad outcome can knock you out of the game.

Nassim Taleb, a former Wall Street trader who now writes about risk and uncertainty, illustrates this in Skin in the Game with a casino. He explains, if you send 100 people to gamble for one day each, a few go broke, but the group as a whole does fine. Now send 1 person to gamble 100 days in a row. If he or she goes broke on day 28, there’s no day 29.

And that’s the critical assumption behind this hopeful idea. The reps only count if you’re still around to take the next one.

Three Practical Guidelines

So when does “keep taking shots” actually pay off? These aren’t a mathematical proof, just practical guidelines. And every one of them is something lean thinkers have been teaching for decades.

1. Survive every attempt. No single failure can be fatal to the person, the team, or the process. This is why we run small experiments, try-storm with cardboard, and pilot in one department before we touch the whole facility. Simply put, fail fast and small so you learn and are still around to take the next shot.

2. Keep a real chance of success. Repeating a method that can’t work isn’t persistence…it’s stubbornness. If every attempt is a copy of the last failed one, more reps probably won’t help. Go to the gemba, or the place the work is done, grasp the actual situation, and experiment your way forward so each attempt teaches you something.

3. Actually take the reps. Long shots take a lot of tries, and as I admitted earlier, this is where I sometimes fall down. I suspect it’s a big reason so many CI programs fizzle. People simply stop shooting.

Where Continuous Improvement Changes the Game

Here’s the part that really excites me. The simple version of this idea assumes your odds stay the same every time. In the world of continuous improvement, they don’t have to.

A well-designed PDCA cycle gives us a chance to learn. A thoughtful Toyota Kata experiment tests an assumption and helps us learn more about the obstacle in our way. And when we learn, our next shot is often a better one. Better shots mean you need far fewer of them.

But learning isn’t automatic. A sloppy experiment with a fuzzy measurement system can teach you the wrong lesson. It’s not the number of experiments that matters. It’s the quality of the learning.

And sometimes good learning tells you to stop. You may discover a solution isn’t worth chasing, and the smartest next shot is aimed somewhere else.

Persistence alone is powerful. Persistence plus learning is a different game entirely.

Your Next Shot

The neurosurgeon is right. Keep shooting and the odds turn in your favor. But lean thinking adds something the math leaves out: every shot can teach you how to take a better one.

So here’s my question for you. What’s one thing you stopped trying too early, and what would a small, survivable next shot look like this week?

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