I was a high school teacher, and I was grading papers at 11 PM on a Sunday night. Again. My coffee had gone cold hours ago, and I could hear my family watching a movie in the next room without me.

I looked at the stack of papers still to grade, then at my bank account on my phone. After 5 years of teaching, I was making $47,000 a year. My mortgage payment was $1,800. You do the math.

That's when it hit me: I was working 60+ hours a week and still couldn't afford the life I wanted for my family.

I felt like a failure.

Maybe you know that feeling. That crushing realization that working harder isn't working. That you're trapped in a system that rewards effort but doesn't reward results.

Here's what I wanted instead:

I wanted to wake up without an alarm clock. I wanted to work on things that actually mattered. I wanted to make enough money that my wife could quit her job if she wanted to. I wanted to take my kids to the beach on a Tuesday afternoon just because.

Simple things. But they felt impossible.

That's when I got desperate enough to take on a second job as a researcher at the local university psychology department. Not because I wanted to - because I had to.

My take-home pay was kind of small, and I wanted things for my family.

But that second job changed everything.

They were working on a research project similar to what Dave Brailsford did with the British Cycling team. You probably know the story - how he took a mediocre cycling team and turned them into Olympic champions not through massive overhauls, but through tiny improvements.

Little things.

1% better every day things.

Well our research proved that it was true... 100% really.

Every single one of our test participants got better - musicians, car mechanics, teachers, housewives, professionals. Not dramatically. Not overnight. Just consistently, measurably better.

And I became fascinated by the idea that little things can get big results.

Here's what we proved:

Most people think success requires massive changes. Dramatic overhauls. Complete life transformations.

But that's not what the research showed.

The research showed that tiny improvements - just 1% better each day - compound into extraordinary results.

Think about it: If you get 1% better every day for a year, you get 37 times better!

In one year!

That's the power of compound improvement.

And here's the beautiful part: 1% is so small, it's almost impossible to fail.

You don't need willpower. You don't need to change your entire life. You just need to get a tiny bit better today than you were yesterday.

From little things, big things grow.

But here's where I made my biggest mistake:

I went a bit crazy with the idea, and thought I could get better at everything.

I wrote out this long list like I was some sort of uber-human and I was going to conquer science and relationships and art and write the next Pulitzer and win an Academy Award and get father of the year and be voted People magazine's sexiest man alive 3 years running.

I was trying to become like Superman.

You can probably guess what happened? I got overwhelmed, burned out, and quit everything within two weeks.

I nearly threw the whole thing in the trash, but I'm kind of stubborn and don't like to give up on an idea.

That's when it all hit me.

I didn’t need to change every thing.

I just needed to change the one thing that everything else relied on.

Without getting all new agey woo woo, I think most people would agree that how we think about the world tends to influence our life.

The person who believes opportunities are everywhere tends to find them.

The person who believes the deck is stacked against them tends to prove themselves right.

The person who believes they can get 1% better every day tends to actually do it.

So I stopped trying to optimize everything and started focusing on the one thing that affects everything.

My inner game.

That's when everything changed.

Instead of trying to improve 47 different areas of my life, I focused on just one: How I think about myself.

And here's what I discovered: When you get your inner game right, everything else starts falling into place.

You don't need to force yourself to wake up early - you naturally start waking up excited about the day.

You don't need to discipline yourself to work harder - you start working on things that energize you.

You don't need to push yourself to take risks - you start seeing opportunities instead of obstacles.

And the compound effect of improving your inner game by just 1% each day? It's extraordinary.

These days, I live in a little house by the beach. I work maybe 3-4 hours a day on things I'm genuinely excited about. I take my kids to the beach on Tuesday afternoons. My wife quit her job because she wanted to, not because she had to.

I'm not telling you this to brag. I'm telling you because I want you to understand something important:

The transformation from "trapped teacher grading papers at 11 PM" to "guy who works 4 hours a day from a beach house" didn't happen through one big breakthrough.

It happened through hundreds of tiny improvements to my inner game.

1% better, every day.

From little things, big things grow.

That's why I started The Luck Report.

I'm kind of obsessed with how amazing this secret is, and I want to share it with as many people as possible.

And as I get older I think more about how I would have loved it if someone had shared this with me when I was first starting out.

How much time it would have saved me?

How much more fun could I have had?

So every day, I research and share one small thing that can improve your inner game by 1%.

Maybe it's a simple reframe that takes 30 seconds but changes how you see setbacks.

Maybe it's a tiny mental habit that takes 2 minutes but transforms your confidence.

Maybe it's a small shift in perspective that makes you exponentially more resilient.

But every single day, you get a little bit better at the inner game that determines everything else.

I call it The Luck Report because I think what we call "luck" is actually how we think about our subconscious.

How you think about success, failure, and possibility.

That's the power of focusing on inner game instead of tactics.

Tactics are rigid. Inner game is flexible.

Tactics work for some people. Inner game works for everyone.

Tactics tell you what to do. Inner game helps you become the kind of person who naturally does the right things.

And here's the beautiful part: When you improve your inner game by just 1% each day, you don't just get better at one thing. You get better at everything.

Better at relationships because you see opportunities to connect instead of reasons to withdraw.

Better at work because you see challenges as puzzles to solve instead of problems to avoid.

Better at health because you see small improvements as victories instead of waiting for dramatic transformations.

Better at money because you see abundance instead of scarcity.

The compound effect of improving your inner game by just 1% each day? It touches every single area of your life.

That's why I started The Luck Report.

It's a regular little email newsletter from me sharing things that are working for me right now. Inner game insights I'm discovering. Small mindset shifts that are making a difference in my life.

Not every day. Not overwhelming. Just whenever I find something worth sharing.

And for those who want more - who want that daily 1% improvement action done for them - I also offer The Magic Button. That's a ridiculously cheap little daily thing that many of my readers swear by, that gives you a DFY specific thing you can do each day to get 1% better at your inner game.

But The Luck Report? That's completely free. Just me sharing what's working as I discover it.