The-Slight-Edge

146 The Slight Edge
ninety-seven percent of the time it takes to get from the Earth to the moon, it’s off
course. In a journey of nearly a quarter of a million miles, the vehicle is on track
for only 7,500 miles ... or to put it another way, for every half-hour the ship is in
flight, it is on course for less than sixty seconds!
And it gets to the moon?! How is that possible?
Because modern space travel is a masterful example of the Slight Edge course
correction in action.
If this machine, one of the most sophisticated, expensive and finely calibrated
pieces of technology ever devised, was correcting its own off-course errors twentynine
minutes out of every thirty, is it reasonable to expect that you could do better
than that? And even if you were able to match the rocket’s degree of accuracy, you’d
still be perfectly on target, on track and on course no more than ten days per year!
For anyone who lacks a grasp of the Slight Edge, being off course is something
to be avoided at all costs. After all, if you’re off course, you’re failing, right? But
those who understand the Slight Edge embrace Thomas Watson’s philosophy
about failure. Here is a more extended version of what he said:
Would you like me to give you the formula for success?
It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure ...
You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But
it isn’t at all ... You can be discouraged by failure—or
you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes.
Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where
you’ll find success. On the other side of failure.
— Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
Remember, the rocket got there. And so can you. Why? Because of
continuous course correction.
What enabled the rocket to continue to make those adjustments that
brought it back on track to reach its destination? The adjustments were all done
by a computerized guidance system, the heart of which was a gyroscope.
A gyroscope is a spinning mass mounted in a base that retains the same
orientation no matter in what direction the base itself is going. You may have played
with a toy gyroscope as a child—the kind you wind up with a string like a top, make
it spin, and no matter how you hold it or what you do to it, it remains upright as
long as it’s spinning around. The force created by that toy gyroscope is so powerful
it can balance on the tip of your finger or dance upright along a string.
The rocket starts from point A (its current position) and heads for point B
(the moon). As it travels its first few miles, it gets slightly off course. Now the