The-Slight-Edge

Faces of the Slight Edge 129
The fable of the tortoise and the hare is really about the remarkable power of
momentum. A body at rest tends to stay at rest—and a body in motion tends to
remain in motion. That’s why your activity is so important. Once you’re in motion,
it’s easy to keep on keeping on. Once you stop, it’s hard to change from stop to go.
Be not afraid of going slowly;
be afraid only of standing still.
— Chinese proverb
I coach people how to build large businesses by doing very simple, easy-to-do
actions every day. I’ve found that it’s far more effective to take one businessbuilding
action every day for a week, than to take seven, or ten, or even two dozen,
all at once and then take the rest of the week off. People who do the first, week in
and week out, build a solid business; people who do the second, don’t—even if they
are actually doing a greater number of those business-building actions.
Why not? No momentum. After six days off, they have to start all over again,
getting themselves geared up and inspired to get back into action. It can take a
good amount of energy and initiative to get yourself started in a new activity—
but it takes far, far less to keep yourself doing it once you’ve started.
There’s another reason once a day is better than seven times, once a week: the
daily rhythm of the thing starts to change you. It becomes part of your routine, and
as it does, it becomes part of who you are. That doesn’t happen with a once-in-awhile,
all-out effort.
Imagine taking a twenty-minute brisk walk in the morning, and then in the late
afternoon, working out on a home gym for another twenty minutes. Now imagine
that for a week, you did that every day. How would you feel at the end of the week?
Now instead, what if on that first day you had taken a 140-minute walk
(that’s over two hours!) and that afternoon, spent another 140 minutes on the
home gym—and then done nothing for the next six days?
Steady wins the race.
When you’re in motion, it’s also far easier to make positive changes in your
direction. It’s like steering a car: when the car’s sitting still, moving the wheel is
hard work, but when it’s moving, even at only 10 or 20 mph, turning is a breeze.
It’s a breeze because you’re already in the flow.
Go Slow to Go Fast
The Slight Edge is a flow, and it moves at its own pace, automatically homing
in on optimal growth rates. Part of understanding the Slight Edge is learning to