How to Build Success by Doing Easy Things (Animation)

This video is a collaboration with Beautiful Science. Be sure to check out their incredible channel after the video.

So, if you're like most people, you've had a vision of your potential future self. The more successful, better-groomed, richer, happier version of yourself. But you've probably also wondered if you can actually become this person or if this person is just a figment of your reckless imagination. Because sometimes the contrast between who you are and who you want to be seems so stark, you wonder if this idea of your potential is even attainable. Or is it just an instrument of false hope, like a carrot to a mule?

After all, while a few people really do achieve their dreams and change the world, the vast majority of others don't. They don't even come close. So what's the difference between these two types of people? And how can we not let our dreams be dreams and actually become the person we think about when the word potential is thrown around?

Author Jeff Olsen suggests that there is a reliable tactic you can use for achieving success, whatever that may mean to you. There is a surefire way to make massive progress in any area of your life, and it's not as hard as you might think. So, here it goes. Everyone who has ever been successful understood this thing called the slight edge. They may not have called it the slight edge, but the slight edge was, without contention, the main factor in them achieving success.

So how does it work? Okay, so say you had a ridiculously rich uncle who was feeling really generous one day, and he said to you, "Kevin, my boy, I'll give you two options: either I give you 1 million dollars cash right now and you can walk out the door a millionaire, or I give you a single penny, one cent, and I will double it every day for a month." That accent was all over the place. Which option would you choose? Gut instinct tells you option 1. But if we do some simple math, option 1 gives you 1 million dollars. It's pretty simple math.

But if you had the patience and perseverance to stick it out for 30 days, option 2 gives you five million three hundred and sixty-eight thousand seven hundred and nine dollars and twelve cents! Over five times the value of option one! Which is weird, because with option two, for the vast majority of those days, this money doubling seems like a waste of time. After 20 days of doubling, you would have only had a little over $5,000. At that point, if you were Kevin, you definitely would have thought you'd up big-time.

But by sticking with it, dramatic change happens. So here's another example: Sure, you can hit the gym really hard one day, like the best, heaviest workout of your life—just straight barbaric! And afterwards, you do everything right. You have a giant protein-rich meal and a long restful night's sleep. But unfortunately, even after all that, you won't see any results visually. You'll be just as big as you were before you went in. In fact, if you were to skip the gym that day altogether, in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't really make a difference. If you asked a friend how you look before and after your workout—assuming there is no such thing as being swole—they'd say you look the exact same.

That's because you don't get to have huge muscles by going to the gym harder than everyone else that one time you're motivated enough to go. You get to have huge muscles by just showing up to the gym every single day for a long period of time.

So the slight edge can all be boiled down to this: Success is not the result of doing difficult, extraordinary things, but rather the result of doing unremarkable, relatively easy-to-do things every single day over a long period of time.

Maybe you want to write a book. If that's the case, then you shouldn't think about it in terms of somehow possessing the massive inspiration to crank out 200 brilliant pages of literature, because you already know that's never gonna happen. If you want to write a book, write half a page and then be done for the day. Then when you wake up the next morning, finish that page and take a break.

Make writing half a page into a simple daily habit, and it'll eventually turn into a well-oiled machine that will easily take you to your goal. By casually showing up every single morning to write a relatively easy amount of words, after a year's time, you'll have written one hundred and eighty-two point five pages. That's a book! And you did it with hardly any strain.

And that's because writing half a page is easy, something you're actually likely to do. But when leveraged by time, half a page turns into a book. Forty-five minutes at the gym turns into a beach body. Thirty minutes of practicing guitar turns into, "Holy Fred, I didn't know you're such a good musician!"

So, if you want to achieve massive progress in your life in any particular area, break it down into a tiny little action—something easy, so easy that you're actually likely to do it. But make sure to do it every single day because, as easy as it is to do, it's just as easy not to do. And doing it or not doing it is the difference between a life of success and one of mediocrity later down the road.

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So I'm in a really small town in northern Saskatchewan called Buffalo Narrows. Don't know if you guys have heard of it. But anyways, I just wanted to say that if you enjoyed this video, go on over to Chris's channel. It's Beautiful Science. The link is in the description of the video.

And go subscribe to his channel because I think he's super underrated. He did a great job animating this video. So thank you very much, Chris! If you like videos like these, hit that subscribe button, hit that like button in order to improve the rankings and so that this video shows up and helps some people out. But yeah, hope you enjoy the video. A little bit of a different style this time, but I'm gonna continue to experiment on this channel forever. So if you want to hop along for the ride, hit that subscribe button. Catch you in the next video and see you in the Facebook group! Guys, have a great day!