The Slight Edge
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
The Slight Edge is about turning simple disciplines into huge success.
It really highlights how the simplest actions repeated overtime determine all our outcomes.
It’s a full philosophy across all key areas on how to live our best life
🎨 Impressions
This book really brought home the importance of small actions to a point where it’s hard to rebut. It also stayed on topic throughout emphasising the point. Although I didn’t really gain any new wisdom or knowledge, it did make me appreciate that I need to continue to work on consistent actions.
The book also felt too preachy about making money being the key direction to strive towards and didn’t question the broader meaning or purpose to life.
How I Discovered It
This was recommended to me several times by Steven Bartlett.
Who Should Read It?
If you are struggling to gain momentum, wanting success in an area of your life or are unsure whether to keep going on your endeavours this book will shine a much needed light.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.
The journey starts with a single step—not with thinking about taking a step.
Successful people do whatever it takes to get the job done, whether or not they feel like it.
📒 Summary + Notes
That’s the only reason our lives follow that roller coaster. It’s that simple. As soon as we get away from failure and up past the line of survival, we quit doing the things that got us there. You know what that means? It means you already know how to do everything it takes to make you an outrageous success. That’s how you’ve survived up to this point. And if you can survive, then you can succeed.
You don’t need to do some brilliant, impossible thing. You don’t need to learn some insanely difficult skills, or have some genius-level brainstorm of an innovative idea. All you have to do is keep doing the things that got you this far. Which is exactly what 99.9 percent of people don’t do.
The slight edge is the first ingredient, the catalyst you need that makes all the how-to’s work.
Master the Mundane
Reason #1: They’re Easy to Do The first answer is one I learned from Jim Rohn: The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they’re also just as easy not to do. It’s easy to save a few bucks a day. And easy not to. It’s easy to do fifteen minutes of cardio a day. Walk a brisk mile or two. Truly easy to do. Or not.
Reason #2: The Results Are Invisible The second reason people don’t do the little things that add up to success is that at first, they don’t add up to success. The doomed frog quit paddling in the cream because he’d been doing it as hard as he could, and it obviously wasn’t having any effect. At least, not one he could see.
Reason #3: They Seem Insignificant The third reason most people live out their entire lives without ever grasping how the slight edge is working in their lives it that is just seems like those little things don’t really matter. So I skipped a day at the gym. What’s a day? Hey, it’s just a cheeseburger. What’s the fuss? The difference between success and failure is not dramatic. In fact, the difference between success and failure is so subtle, so mundane, that most people miss it. They may not realize they have a philosophy, but they do, and it goes like this: What I do right now doesn’t really matter.
What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people are those who understand that the little choices they make matter, and because of that they choose to do things that seem to make no difference at all in the act of doing them, and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.
Slow Down to Go Fast
The secret of time is simply this: time is the force that magnifies those little, almost imperceptible, seemingly insignificant things you do every day into something titanic and unstoppable. consistently repeated daily actions + time = inconquerable results.
What happens if you add one small, simple, positive action to the success side? Nothing you can see. What happens if you add one more? Nothing you can see. What happens if you keep adding one more, and one more, and one more, and one more … Before too long, you see the scales shift, ever so slightly. And then again. And eventually, that heavy “failure” side starts to lift, and lift, and lift … and the scales start swinging your way.
If you want to understand and apply the slight edge to create the life of your dreams, you can’t make your everyday choices based on the evidence of your eyes. You need to make them based on what you know. You have to see through the eyes of time.
No matter what you have done in your life up until today, no matter where you are and how far down you may have slid on the failure curve, you can start fresh, building a positive pattern of success, at any time. Including right now. But you need to have faith in the process, because you won’t see it happening at first.
If you base your choices on the evidence, on what you can see, you’re sunk. You need to base your choices on your philosophy—on what you know, not what you see.
The Slight Edge is about your awareness. It is about you making the right choices, the choices that serve you and empower you, starting right now and continuing for the rest of your life, and learning to make them effortlessly.
What feeds your patience and keeps you on the path is a philosophy
The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.
Time is the force that magnifies those simple daily disciplines into massive success. There is a natural progression to success: plant, cultivate, harvest—and the central step, cultivate, can only happen over the course of time. No genuine success in life is instant. Life is not a clickable link. To grasp how the slight edge works, you have to view your actions through the eyes of time. Difficult takes a little time; impossible takes just a little longer
Don’t Fall for Quantum Leap
Essential Points from Chapter 6 Quantum leaps do happen, but only as the end result of a lengthy, gradual buildup of consistently applied effort. No success is immediate, no collapse is sudden. They are both the result of the slight edge accruing momentum over time. Hoping for “the big break”—the breakthrough, the magic bullet—is not only futile, it’s dangerous, because it keeps you from taking the actions you need to create the results you want.
We look for the cure, the breakthrough, the magic pill—the medical-scientific quantum leap miracle our press has dubbed the “magic bullet.” But the solution already exists. It always did. Is it magic? Yes—the same magic that caused the problem: the power of daily actions, compounded over time. The magic of the slight edge.
Start with a Penny
Great success often starts from a tiny beginning—but there has to be a beginning. You have to start somewhere. You have to do something. If you add just 1 percent of anything—skill, knowledge, effort—per day, in a year it will have more than tripled. But you have to start with the 1 percent. Greatness is not something predetermined, predestined, or carved into your fate by forces beyond your control. Greatness is always in the moment of the decision
Part 2 - Living The Slight Edge
Two Life Paths
Everything is always in motion. Every day, every moment, your life path is either curving upward, or curving downward. Growing up we heard five times as many nos as yeses. Life has a downward pull. People on the success curve live in responsibility. People on the failure curve live in blame. People on the success curve are pulled by the future. People on the failure curve are pulled by the past. No matter where you are, at any moment you can choose to step onto the success curve.
Invest in Yourself
Essential Points from Chapter 12 The wisest investment you can make is to invest in your own continuous learning and development. Learning by studying and learning by doing—book smarts and street smarts—are the two essential pistons of the engine of learning. On the path to a goal you will be off-course most of the time. Which means the only way to reach a goal is through constant and continuous course correction. Most of your life—99.99 percent—is made up of things you do an automatic pilot. Which means it’s essential that you take charge of your automatic pilot’s training
Momentum
The power of momentum: steady wins the race. The power of completion: clear out your undones and incompletes. The power of reflection: facing the man or woman in the mirror. The power of celebration: catch yourself doing something right.
Cultivate Slight Edge Habits
Show Up Be the frog who not only decides to jump off the lily pad but actually jumps. The world is rife with hesitation, the cornerstone of mediocrity. When you talk with people who have achieved extraordinary things and ask them how it was that they accomplished whatever it is they’ve done, it is stunning how often they will tell you some version of this: I just decided to do it.
Show up: be the frog who jumps off the lily pad. Show up consistently: keep showing up when others fade out. Cultivate a positive outlook: see the glass as overflowing. Be committed for the long haul: remember the 10,000-hour rule. Cultivate a burning desire backed by faith: not hoping or wishing—knowing. Be willing to pay the price: sometimes you have to quit the softball team. Practice slight edge integrity: do the things you’ve committed to doing, even when no one else is watching.
There are two kinds of habits: those that serve you, and those that don’t. Brushing your teeth is a habit that serves you; biting your nails is one that doesn’t. Thinking things through for yourself serves you; blindly accepting everything you read online or hear through the gossip grapevine doesn’t. Looking for the best in people serves you; anticipating their worst doesn’t. The first type of habit wields the force of the slight edge on your behalf and moves you along the success curve; the second turns the slight edge subtly but remorselessly against you and pulls you down the failure curve.
Your Turn
Write out your goals and dreams, a simple starting plan, and a single daily discipline:
For your health
For your happiness
For your relationships
For your personal development
For your finances
For your career
For your impact on the world
What one simple, single, easy-to-do activity can you do, day in and day out, that will have the greatest impact on your health, your happiness, your relationships, your personal development, your finances, your career, and your impact on the world?
Earlier in this book you walked through a brief exercise where you assessed your life as being on the success curve or failure curve in these seven specific areas. Now let’s revisit them, only this time I’m going to ask you to make a simple roadmap for each one, consisting of three elements:
1) Your dreams for that area, expressed as goals—specific, vivid, and with a timeline
2) A simple plan to start
3) One simple daily discipline that you will commit to doing each and every day from now on.
Final Thoughts
Successful people go to work on their philosophy first, because they know it is the source of their attitudes, actions, results, and the quality of their lives. They understand that they can increase their success by doubling their rate of failure. They understand activity and because they do the thing, they have the power. They understand the power of simple things. They understand the power of daily disciplines. They understand the power of the water hyacinth, and know how to use it. They know how to keep paddling when others give up and sink. They know when they are being offered the choice of wisdom. Successful people understand the slight edge, and they put it to work for them.
