The Secret of the Slight Edge Philosophy

3 to Succeed is about doing small things consistently over time to reach your goals. If you want to be successful in school and in life, then you cannot be in the habit of doing a lot of things at once and then sitting down, resting on your laurels, and hoping everything will work itself out. Instead, you should use the slight edge.

So here’s what the slight edge says: it’s the little things we do every single day, consistently, over time that compound into massive results.

Jeff Olson, author of The Slight Edge, puts it a great way:

If you were to improve just .003 each day—that’s only 3/10 of one percent, a very Slight Edge—and you kept that up for the next five years, here’s what would happen to you:

The first year, you would improve 100 percent (you would already be twice what you are today). The second year, you would improve 200 percent. The third year, 400 percent. And the fourth year, 800 percent. And by the end of year five—by simply improving 3/10 of one percent each day—you will have magnified your value, your skills, and the results you accomplished 1,600 percent. That’s 22 times more than you are today.

It’s amazing when you look at what little effort compounded over time will yield. In fact, when asked to name the greatest invention in human history, Albert Einstein simply replied, “compound inter- est.” Compound interest makes people rich.

Compounded action makes people successful.

Tell me whether this scenario sounds familiar to you. Let’s say you have an exam coming up. You study really hard for the test and stay up all night cramming the information into your head. You take the test. What happens over the next few days? You forget almost every- thing, right? Or the experience of studying so hard is so draining you don’t even want to think about picking up a book for at least another two weeks, which turns into three weeks, which turns into a vicious cycle of constantly pulling all-nighters before your exams.

The truth is we don’t ever have to do all-nighters. Your exams are never a surprise, are they? You always know exactly when your finals and midterms are. There’s this little thing called a syllabus. I’ve never heard of a professor giving a pop final. So rather than cram- ming in a brutal all-nighter, you can review your course work each day and compound the effects of your studies.

The bottom line is little steps done over time produce the best and least stressful results.

“Little hinges swing big doors.”
-W. Clement Stone

Arel Moodie is widely known as America's Top Young Speaker. He has spoken to over 65,000 students in 39 states and 2 countries on the topics of student success, student leadership and student entrepreneurship. He is a leading authority on helping students of this generation succeed in school and in life. He is also the best selling author of the book Your Starting Point For Student Success. To find out more about Arel's book, go to www.startingpointbook.com. To find out more about Arel's speaking please go to www.arelmoodie.com.