PNTV: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson (#215)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. The Slight Edge subtitle Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness, which is what this book is all about. This slight edge is turning simple disciplines, simple daily disciplines that, as Jeff says, are so easy to do and they're so easy not to do. But if you do them consistently over time and you let that compound, the results are massive. It's little things like are you going to work out today or are you going to eat well today? Are you going to say you appreciate and love your spouse or children or colleagues or whatever, those little tiny choices, any one of which isn't going to dramatically affect your life. It's not even going to affect it at all. You won't really notice if you skip a day of working out. I notice it when I skip two or three. My mind's not as clear. But you're not going to one workout, you know, or one meal, not a big deal. One rough day at the office or with your partner, not a big deal. But if those add up over time, you're going to be on what he calls this the failure curve. What we want to do is get on the success curve. And that is found by doing this simple. So simple they're extraordinarily easy to overlook. Those simple things consistently over time, you get massive results. So philosopher's note, bunch of big ideas. Got five of my favorite ones here. Let's jump straight in. The first idea, the anti. Anti Quantum Leap. The anti Quantum Leap, Jeff jokes that that's kind of one of his inspirations for the book is all these people who have this idea of a quantum leap that somehow magically a thing goes from one level to another. But even in physics, one thing doesn't just magically go from one to another. There's a building process where it inevitably gets to that point where it makes a leap. But it wasn't just random. There were a certain set of things that happened before then that that led to that event. He says the same thing with our lives. And he tells a great story about movies. How we're conditioned as a society to expect things to happen ridiculously quickly. He says, look, nature works like this. Plant, cultivate and then harvest. Plant, cultivate, harvest. But we're conditioned to expect things to happen unbelievably quickly. And you take a two hour movie, for example, he says, look, in two hours you have this portrayal of a nation being born and built or a relationship, an amazing romance, all Captured in two hours. Or a fighter who's becoming extraordinary all captured in two hours. And you have a five second romance scene or a five second fighter preparing for training, where he goes from a total novice to an expert overnight. He says, that's insane. And we're conditioned to think that you can do anything great in a two hour period, which is just absurd. And George Leonard says the same thing. George Leonard says we need to learn to love the plateaus. If we want to be masters, we have to learn to love the plateaus, the boring stuff. And he says, you know, you have these climaxes, right? Just awesome growth periods. Then you have a plateau where it's boring and you don't grow a lot at all. Then you have another little spurt and then you get another long plateau and another spurt and then you go like that. And he says, look, most of life is a plateau. We need to learn to love the plateau. But what happens in most of media is a constant climax. It's just constantly going up to insane rates. And you take like a 30 second beer commercial or whatever the guys are working or the guys and gals or whatever are working for a split second when they rip off their suits, they're on a beach and everyone's hot, drinking beers, playing volleyball. It's one big climax after another. They all live in amazing houses and they have these amazing bodies and all they're doing is drinking all the time. They're not showing the actual plateau. The daily simple disciplines that it took in order to get any level of mastery so you can enjoy whatever level of success you want to see in your life. That is huge anti quantum leap. Learn to love the plateau. That's the essence of this slight edge and of mastery. Second big idea here is how's your axe? How's your axe? He quotes the quote that is attributed to Abraham Lincoln who apparently said if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend four of those hours sharpening his axe. Only two hours actually chopping down the tree. So babe, Lincoln had six hours to chop down a tree, four spent on preparing the axe so it was really ready to go, and two spent on actually doing the work. Jeff tells us, you are the axe. You need to sharpen yourself by investing the energy in making yourself a better human being. He gives us a bunch of different domains that we can master in our lives. And this is the essence of Stephen Covey's seventh habit. So Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly Effective people. This, the seventh habit is sharpen the saw. He uses a saw instead of an axe, but the same basic idea. And he tells the story that you've probably heard, but it's worth repeating, which is, a guy goes up to someone else in the forest and this guy's sawing down a tree and this individual says to the other one who's sawing, hey, dude, I think your blade is dull. You may want to slow down and sharpen that blade. It'd be a lot easier for you if you just took a little bit of time and sharpened it, because I'm pretty sure it's dull and you're having to work harder than you would if you had a sharp blade. And the guy who's sawing says, what are you talking about, man? I don't have time to slow down. I can't do that. I've got too much going on. It's insane. Anybody who says they don't have enough time to exercise or eat well or rest and get a proper night of sleep or do any of the other things involved in sharpening our axe has just proven that they need to do it more than almost anyone else. Robin Sharma tells a story about someone who's driving long distance trip and they're going so fast and they're so committed to getting to their destination as quickly as they can, they don't have time to stop for gas. But guess what? Whether you have time to stop for gas or not, you're going to need to stop and you're going to need to get gas unless you've got a super long distance thing. But if you go far enough, you're going to need to get some gas or some electricity to power your car for another part of that trip. We need to think about that and you're going to get stopped. If you're not getting stopped for the plug in for your electric car, for the gas for your normal car, you're going to get sick. That's the metaphorical equivalent of you just falling apart. You've got to slow down and take care of yourself. And again, if you're telling yourself you don't have enough time, that's the perfect indication you need to create the time. Create your stop doing list, remove some things from your calendar and figure out what, what daily disciplines you're going to engage in to give yourself a slight edge. That's the second big idea. Third big idea, course correction. He tells a great story about the Apollo mission to the moon. Apparently it was about 250,000 mile trip, right? Now in that trip, they were Actually off course, slightly off course for 97% of the time or something like that. So out of those 250,000 miles they were traveling to the moon, they were only actually on course, perfectly on course, about 7,500 of those 250,000 miles. They were constantly course correcting. They had a clear destination and then they were adjusting and getting back on track. He says, look, do you think you're going to have a better rate of success than the Apollo mission? Probably not. And if that's the case, you need to prepare yourself to be off course and make that okay because be okay with making mistakes. And he says if you follow the same math and you are off course for something like 97% of the time in a 365 day year, you're only going to be perfectly on course about 10 days. In other words, most of the time you're going to be correcting your course. No big deal. We don't need to sweat about it. You're off course, fine. Get back on course. Reengage in your daily disciplines. Have a burning desire to hit a certain goal in faith you can hit it and then get back on course. That's our third big idea. The fourth big idea is a big one. Slight Edge Integrity says ultimately it comes down to what do you do when no one's looking. How nice all about it when you're in front of people and stuff. But what do you do when no one's looking? You have this commitment to a certain set of ideals or. But when no one else is around, who are you? What are you doing? That's a measure of your slight edge integrity. We want to dial that in. That's our basic idea of arete that we come back to again and again and again and again. We're not trying to be perfect here. We want to be honest about it and then we want to do what we can to get a little bit better, A little bit better, a little bit better hone in that slight edge. Fifth Big Idea is a Good One. Talks about plans. He says that most people get caught up when they get to the planning phase of what they want to do. He does some work on goal setting, etc. He loves Napoleon Hill. Think and Grow Rich. Burning desire, as I just mentioned, backed with faith, etc. So then you make a plan so you can go out and achieve what you want to achieve in life. Right. He says most people get stuck because they want a perfect plan. They want a plan that will take them from the starting line all the way to the finish line and they want it to be perfect, absolutely flawless. He says, look, that's just not how it works, period. No one is so good at long range planning that they can do anything over an extended period of time with perfect precision in their planning. Impossible, he says you need to shift from trying to get your your finish line planned to a starting gate plan. Get in the game. Ready, fire, aim, Figure out what you're going to do to start. Get your plan to start. Don't get your perfectionistic self all wrapped up in a bundle of whatever and never get out the gate. Figure out how you're going to get in the game and then know that your plan is going to adjust with the data that you get. You can't foresee what's going to happen in two or three years. That's like going on back in our car. We've got gas in it now, we're driving. And if you're on a trip, you have a rough sense of where you want to go. But you're not trying to plan the turn you're going to make in 28 miles. You know you're going to need to make a right turn. You don't know. You just drive. There might be a detour here, you might need to go over here. Might be a little rain which slows everything down. No big deal. But get your plan to the point where you can get out of your starting gate and into the game. It's a big idea. And then of course you're going to course correct throughout the process. We're not going to get upset about our mistakes. We're going to double our rate of failure is what Tom Watson of IBM said. If you want to increase your rate of success, double your rate of failure. Play big, get in the game and adjust as you go and do the right thing day in and day out. How's your axe? Sharpen it. Invest your time in yourself. Another big idea that's worth mentioning. One of his big things in personal development, he says, start with your health. That's the most important habit that you need to build. How are you going to take care of your health? Because that's what keeps you in the game and gives you the vitality to do what you want to do. He also comes back dozens of times to the idea of reading 10 pages per day of good self development wisdom. 10 pages per day, 3500 plus pages a year. That's like 10 to 20 great books that can literally change your life. So sharpen your axe, figure out what you need to do, go do it. Anti Quantum Leap Quit looking for the magic thing, he says. Have you ever noticed that lottery winners are never really successful people who are already super successful? He says. Why is that? Because successful people don't buy lottery tickets. They know life is not a lottery. They don't look for big breaks. They show up and they do the little things day in and day out. That's our Slight edge. So quit looking for the big break and think about what you can do over the long run. That if you started doing it now over not a month or two or three, but a year or two or three, or a decade or two or three, you're going to see results that are magnificent, he says. Often faster than you might imagine. But have the patience to show up diligently, patiently, persistently. As Ezenguenka says, you are bound to be successful. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed quick look at Slight Edge. It's a fun book. If you enjoyed this, I think you'll enjoy the book and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Most important question, what are your daily disciplines that you can engage in consistently? Go out and rock that. Look forward to sharing more. See you.