The Slight Edge: How Small Improvements Help in Reaching Goals

So much of our struggle in reaching goals we set for ourselves is having the consistent discipline to make it a reality.

The slight edge philosophy solves that problem by reducing the long-term goal to a very small commitment each day. By doing something small each day and multiplying it over time you can accomplish anything.

Consistency Plus Time

For many people, the difficulty of getting what they want in life is that they lose steam in meeting their goals. When you start out wanting to make a change or add a new skill it can feel really daunting. The slight edge philosophy helps by breaking it down into small daily choices.

If you wanted to play the guitar for example, how is it that you are going to learn to play a new instrument? The better question is what can you commit to on a daily basis to learning the guitar?

If you can commit to 15 minutes of playing time each day, you can learn to play. The problem is that those 15 minutes don’t feel like much is happening. You struggle each day learning chords and it seems like no progress is happening. But the slight edge philosophy says something else. Something really important is happening in those 15 minutes.

In his book, The Slight Edge, Jeff Olson explains how this works.

“The secret of time is simply this: time is the force that magnifies those little, almost imperceptible, seemingly insignificant things you do every day into something titanic and unstoppable.” (Olson, 2018).

By creating small adjustments we begin to gain incredible gains over the long haul. A few days in nothing changes. But several months, years or decades and suddenly everything has changed.

You’re Either Going Towards Your Goals Or Away

In Olson’s book, he says that you can only be achieving your goals, or, not achieving them. There is no middle ground. He also makes the claim that it is easy to go towards your goals because what you are doing each day is not a major effort (15 mins of playing the guitar).

However, it is also easy to not go towards your goals. He claims that most people don’t make the consistent effort to do this. As you can see in the graphic below you are either doing the small thing you need to reach your goal everyday or you are not.

Oftentimes we can’t anticipate the big gains we are going to make down the line (the point where the curve starts to move upward). As we trudge along each day we start to lose energy and give up on our goal. We begin to doubt ourselves. However, the slight edge philosophy can help motivate us by showing that our small decisions can help us get there.

Responsibility Vs. Blame

One of the other important elements of the slight edge is taking full responsibility for our lives. When we decide to move forward and commit to making our goals a reality we can stop making any excuses of why we are or are not making our goals happen. We don’t need to blame anyone else but ourselves for doing the thing that will help us get closer to our goals.

Olson makes this point quite clear.

“The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the failure curve is blame. The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the success curve is responsibility.” (Olson, 2018).

When we decide to take responsibility we have total control over the outcome. We also don’t blame others when things come up and we don’t do our daily work. We come back to responsibility and refocus our efforts.

“Taking responsibility liberates you; in fact, it is perhaps the single most liberating thing there is. Even when it hurts, even when it doesn’t seem fair. When you don’t take responsibility, when you blame others, circumstances, fate, or chance, you give away your power. When you take and retain full responsibility—even when others are wrong or the situation is genuinely unfair—you keep your life’s reins in your own hands.” (Olson, 2018).

How This Shows Up In My Life

I have been committing to elements of the slight edge in my own life. Currently my life feels really packed, but, committing time to doing a few small things each day is helping to reach my goals. I have committed to learning Spanish. The way to do this for me is to spend 10 mins a day on a Spanish app learning the nuances of the language. Doing this each day gets me a few small steps towards becoming fluent.

I also want to learn to play the guitar. I haven’t found the level of commitment to get this going. I take full responsibility for this. I am going to start carving out 15 mins at night to playing chords and practicing one song.

The one thing I have noticed is that learning anything at the beginning makes it really difficult to stay focused. If you keep going, through the early stages, it starts to get easier. With Spanish, I have started to to put things together and it feels like I’m actually learning the language. This motivates me to do more to learn the language and I may do other things in order to accomplish this goal.