The-Slight-Edge

60 The Slight Edge
Not really. I mean, not noticeably. Maybe just a little ... say, a penny’s worth.
Hardly seems worth the effort. And after a week, you’re feeling sixty-four cents’
worth better. Big deal! You’ve had to put up with some rainy weather, walk
through a few stiff muscles, and miss your favorite news program ... hey, it’s
really not worth it.
But what if you kept doing it anyway? Would you eventually feel like a
million bucks? No—you’d feel like ten million.
But you need to start with the penny.
Now imagine that penny is your knowledge.
If I told you that reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich would change
your life, would you sit down and read it, cover to cover, today? Mind you, that’s
a 256-page book, and those aren’t lightweight pages. Or another classic, Stephen
Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s a 358-pager, and it’s not
easy reading.
Would you read either one in a single day? I doubt it. I wouldn’t—I can’t
spend the entire day reading, and I’ll bet you can’t either.
But could you read a penny’s worth—say, ten pages? (Actually, at current
used-book prices on amazon.com, ten pages of the Hill book would cost about
fifty cents, and ten pages of the Covey book would run about ten cents—but I’m
using the penny here as a metaphor!) I don’t know how much you would get out
of ten pages; maybe a lot, maybe nothing. Let’s say you get nothing. But if you
could read ten pages today, could you read ten more tomorrow? Of course you
could—anyone who can read could do that.
And if you do that, and you keep it up every day for a year, you will have read
about a dozen brilliant, life-transforming classics. Your mind will be filled with
the strategies and know-how to create a startling new level of success. You will
have thoughts of millionaires—all from a penny.
But you need to start with the penny.
Let’s Get Real
“Okay, doubling a penny in a story is all very well. But I don’t see anyone
offering to double my money every day for a month, not in real life. Besides, even
if I could get compound interest on a money account, how am I supposed to add
up compound interest in health, or relationships, or knowledge?”
Fair enough. Let’s change the question. Forget about doubling for a minute,
and let’s forget about compound interest, too, for the moment. Let’s just add
a penny every day, not double the penny. Do you think you could improve