Thursday, December 07, 2006

Doing the little things

A recent post from the great blog Signal vs. Noise reminds us that big change happens when we change all the little things. This ties in nicely with the book Good to Great, which I read recently. Great companies rarely have done anything spectacular to become so, they've merely done all the small things correctly. The "flywheel" builds momentum with each little push, and then eventually the momentum itself is enough to power the wheel. And it's hard to stop.

It makes sense that these concepts would be applicable on a personal level. Successful people do all the little things right: they're organized, don't procrastinate, and make decisive decisions. They may not always be correct, but it's impossible to make the right move all the time anyway.

A speaker I saw recently was preaching that the first step was to get rid of all the "messes" in your life. He meant physical messes (like that pile of papers on your desk), but also emotional messes.

Once you do all the little things right, he mused, the big things all just fall into place.

No comments: