The Slight Edge

When I was in 5th grade, I read a book entitled The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about the book. In fact, I had no interest in reading it. My dad placed a wager on reading the book, and I took it. I even wrote a short book report on it, although I have no idea where that ended up. I don't bring this up to brag about reading a book one time in 5th grade (that would be really lame) or about winning a bet (although I did). I bring this up because there is one very interesting principle, the namesake of the book in fact, that has stuck with me.

The Slight Edge

You already know what the slight edge is, even if you are unfamiliar in an academic sense. It has other variations or names, but we'll refer to it as the slight edge. The slight edge is a simple act of discipline to positively enact change in your life. Jeff Olson describes it as "easy to do, easy not to do". An easy example is taking the stairs instead of the escalator. Taking the stairs is easy enough for most people, but it is also easy not to do. Escalators are fun, they do the work for you. Besides, how much benefit does anyone really get from taking the stairs? Truth be told, taking the stairs over the escalator has very little benefit one time. Almost indecipherable. But over time, those trips on the stairs burn calories, build stamina, build endurance. The point here is that it isn't really a difficult choice. It's just a choice that's pretty simple to do, but also very easy not to.

My dorm freshman year had a long staircase leading to the top of a hill where my dorm was located. This dorm was aptly named The Hill. Every day I would walk up these stairs. I should mention that these are particularly steep stairs. For the first week, you're carrying a heavy backpack in the August heat and heaving by the time you've arrived at the top. After the first month, you can comfortably walk up these stairs without complete exhaustion. Another few weeks, you have endurance to actually talk while climbing the stairs. Eventually, you are taking them in stride, two at a time, without being winded at all. It wasn't until walking the staircase with someone who didn't live in my dorm that I could observe the difference. I never really noticed the change in myself until I was looking down the staircase at a reflection of myself only a few weeks earlier. Halfway up and already out of breath compared to where I am now. I hardly observed the change over time.

This isn't about setting impossibly huge goals, it's about focusing on simple changes that create positive results. This is why I liken it more to the Pareto Principle than running for an hour every day. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of results come from 20% of the causes. I love the explanation on Investopedia, "[f]or the most part, the Pareto Principle is an observation that things in life are not always distributed evenly." To that end, focus on the things that are unevenly distributed. Focus on the actions you can take to create unequal, positive, and compounding results.

How many times have you worked hard all day, but avoided that one phone call that's holding up the pipeline? How many days have you read books instead of implementing solutions? Researched instead of confronting the problem? You might not be doing the wrong things, maybe you just aren't focusing on the right ones. You want to read but don't have the time. Start by reading one page today. Just one page. Tomorrow, read one more than today. Pretty soon, you'll be at a chapter a day without much effort. All it took was starting with a habit that takes a minute or less: reading one page.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 27% of U.S. adults said they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year in any form. That's shocking, but not surprising. Maybe you don't want to take the time to read a page during the day. Simple fix; listen to audiobooks. I go grocery shopping about once every two weeks. I go for about an hour every time. With travel time, carrying groceries inside, and putting them away, we're looking at close to an hour and a half. Plenty of excellent books are less the 6 hours long in audio form. So every two months, I can finish a book without changing my lifestyle at all. If I only listened to audiobooks while at the grocery store, that's 6 books in a year. That's not an incredible figure, but it's 6 more than I would've read. It's a heck of a lot better than a quarter of American adults who read no books this year. I happen to listen to more books than I get a chance to crack open. I read more now than I ever have by doing the things I already do.

The Slight Edge isn't about restructuring your entire life to make a change, it's about making small changes to restructure your life. If you wanted to start doing push-ups, you'd be better to set a goal of one more than yesterday over 100 every day. If you haven't done any push-ups in the past year, you're likely unable to do 100 today. Even if you accomplish that, you'll likely be so exhausted and sore that you won't be able to do any for the rest of the week. Pretty soon, you forget about your goal of 100 push-ups every day. Habits > Metrics. If, by contrast, you only did one push-up today, you would hardly notice a difference. If tomorrow you did one more, the same could be said. Soon enough, you'll be 100 days in, and you'll be doing 100 push-ups and hardly noticing a difference. After all, it's only 1 more than 99.

Easy to do, easy not to do. That's the difference of the slight edge.

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Sources

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paretoprinciple.asp

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america/