The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness

by Jeff Olson

Do you think you could improve yourself—your health, your happiness, your knowledge, your skills, your diet, your relationships, whatever area of life you want to look at—just 1 percent’s worth per day? That’s so slight an edge, you might not even know quite how to measure it. But if you did that again tomorrow, and the next day, and kept it up every day for the next year? Here’s what that looks like when it’s actually happening. The first day you’ll improve by a factor of 0.01, so little it will probably be impossible to notice. The second day, your improvement will be 0.02; the next day, 0.03. So little, still, that it’s almost invisible. Again, this is why people quit the gym, skip their assignments, and don’t bother with thank-you notes. What good is feeling 0.03 times slimmer or 0.03 times more fit? Why bother? Yet by pursuing that course and adding just one penny a day, by the end of the year you would be more than three times as fit, three times as happy, three times as knowledgeable, three times as skilled, three times the you, in just one year.