1 is more than 0.
An obvious statement, but I think many people forget just how small “1” has to be to make a difference.
0 is inaction. It is thinking about starting, but not actually starting. It is planning, not doing.
1 is showing up when you do not feel motivated. It is doing that 1 pushup in the day to keep your unbroken habits streak going.
I often find that there is a voice in my head that tries to rationalise things away. That the effort is so small, that it does not matter if I do it or not, but that could not be further away from the truth.
Often the smallest actions can have an outsized impact when done consistently over time. This can feel counterintuitive because our minds are not good at exponential thinking. Our evolutionary biology has set us up at thinking linearly. I pick 100 berries in one hour, so I’ll pick 200 berries in two hours.
We forget about momentum, about compounding, and about leverage.
To go into cliche territory, a journey of a thousand miles does indeed start with a single step. Think about that. You have to take the first step to be able to complete the journey — there is no other way.
Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier
