What Does 5% Look Like?

I've been desperately trying to wade through the backlog of saved things from my Feedly so I can move on to the backlog of articles that have accumulated while I've been sorting through articles I've had saved for way too long.

I'd like to do this 5% faster. (Photo
I dug out of my archives, so I'm not
sure about the source.)

In the process, I ran across this marketing article with everyone's favourite type of content-- a list--and one of the tips stuck with me: Do 5% More.

Patrick Armitage, the article writer, says "This was advice I got from my uncle, a successful painter. He said that because there’s so much mediocrity in the art world, those doing five percent more reap the cumulative effect of being a little better."

One of the reasons that I spent time reading these articles at all is to contribute to my own professional development, so naturally I'm thinking about what 5% more looks like in my job, but also in the rest of my life. As a writer, as a runner, as a sometime crafter-- what does 5% more mean?

• Do I stay longer in the office to finish the project I'm working on? 
• Can I meet deadlines a bit earlier?
• My usual goal is to write 2000 words per day-- can I write 2100?
• Can I stop what I'm doing a few minutes earlier in the evening so I get to bed on time?
• Even if my crafts are just for my enjoyment, can I think of ways to make them just a little better?
• How hard would it be to add a few faster spurts in my running?
• In between books I read for fun, can I read research-based ones about technical writing or nonprofit issues to expand my own knowledge base?

Maybe blogging about it can be today's 5%. Maybe tomorrow I'll think of another one.

What do you do to get better at being you?