March 22, 2017
Interview with Jeff Olsen, author of the book The Slight Edge
Mike Carruthers:
Seldom does success come quickly. More often it’s the result of doing little things consistently over time.
Jeff Olsen:
It’s really a simple concept of successful people do little things that seem to make no difference at all in the act of doing them. But they just do them over and over and over (consistency) until the compounded affect kicks in.
Jeff Olsen, author of the book The Slight Edge, says as an example reading 10 pages of a good book every night.
That’s something that’s very, very easy to do and it’s something also that’s very easy not to do. And you take those 10 pages and you do it every time that’s 3,600 something pages in a year, you know that’s 12 books. 12 books can change a person’s philosophy – it can change their attitude, it can change a lot of things about them. And it wasn’t 1 big thing that happened to them it was a bunch of little things that happened.
This philosophy is true in all areas of life; health, money, even relationships.
You know relationships are built 1 comment at a time, 1 touch at a time. The exact same thing, I think people start taking somebody for granted, they quit saying the things they used to say, they quit doing the things they used to do, they quit having the moments they used to have – although in that moment it doesn’t really matter but the compound effect of that really does.
While it’s great to look for that 1 big thing that will make the difference it seldom happens.
You know you very rarely see successful people win the lotteries. Because successful people don’t buy into that philosophy – they buy in doing these little things. People who are successful in business understand the consistency and persistency over time, it’s these baby steps that matter more than anything else.
