Jack Canfield explains how small daily habits compound into major results over time. He uses concrete examples: reading 10 pages a day adds up to 36 books yearly, and consistent practice in any skill creates exponential progress. His mentors Debbie Clement Stone and Coach Russell Stockton taught him this principle, which he now tracks through a points system in his Momentum Mastermind.
Questions this video answers
7,300 minutes, which he states is 121 hours.
He says the average Bible is 1,200 pages and reading one page per day would complete it in about three years and three months.
3,650 pages per year.
Eliminate one hour of television per day; Jack says this yields 365 additional hours per year (about nine and a half weeks).
Hit two buckets (~100 swings) after practice (100 swings × 5 days = 500 extra swings/week); ~2,000 extra swings/month; ~20,000 extra swings across a 10-month school year. He also reports seven players adopted it and they won the conference title that year.
Chapters
Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and the author of the Success Principles. And today I'd like to talk to you about a simple but powerful principle that can radically increase your level of achievement in any area of your life. This simple but powerful secret that I want to discuss with you today has been referred to as the compound effect and the slight edge. And what it involves is the consistent daily practice of just a little bit more. It's all about harnessing the power of small daily disciplines done consistently over time that add up to produce massive results that ultimately put you in the top 5% of achievers in the world. Now, what separates the super successful people from the not so successful people are consistent actions taken over time that actually are mostly easy to do. But and here's the rub, they're also easy not to do. Now, if you've done any reading or watching any videos on the topic of how to be more successful, you no doubt know that you need to read, meditate, exercise, practice developing your skills, save and invest money, build your network, surround yourself with successful people, celebrate your successes, practice gratitude and keep your attitude positive and take daily actions toward your goals and visualize your success, ask for what you want, exceed people's expectations, and on and on. Now, you know a lot about what activities lead to success, and most of these activities are not really that hard to do. You see, it's easy to fit in a 20 minute walk every day, but it's also easy not to. It's easy to read for 20 minutes every day, but it's also easy not to. It's easy to drink an extra glass of water every day. And it's also easy not to. It's easy to meditate for 10 minutes a day, but it's also easy to skip it. It's easy to fit in 10 push ups every day and it's also easy not to at all. But let's look at the difference doing these simple things make. If you were to go for a 20 minute walk every day in one year, you would have walked for 7300 minutes, which is 121 hours, which is the equivalent of three 40 hour work weeks of exercise. And consider this. Add just two more minutes to that walk and you get an additional 730 minutes or 12 more hours of exercise. Just a little bit more every day can make a huge difference. Most people that are Christians have never read the complete Bible. Their excuse is, well, it's just too long. See, the average Bible is 1,200 pages long. If you just read one page a day, you would have it completed in three years and about three months. A little bit every day ends up being a major achievement. Now, if you were to read just 10 pages of any personal development book every day, you would have read 3650 pages a year, which is the equivalent of 10 or 20 life changing transformational books a year. The same is true with writing every day. If you wrote just one page a day, you'd have completed a 365 page book in a year. Now here's one that my early millionaire mentor, Debbie Clement Stone taught me, and that was to eliminate one hour of television watching a day. Now that added up to 365 additional hours a year to read, to study, to meditate, to exercise or work on achieving my breakthrough goals. And if you divide365 again by 40 hours, a standard work week, that gives you an additional nine and a half weeks of productive time. That's like having a 13 month year in over 10 years. That adds up to an entire extra year of productive behavior. Stone taught me this secret in 1972. That's 50 years ago. That's 1,725 extra weeks of productive time, which has allowed me to write, co author and edit more than 200 books in my life, which has made me a multimillionaire one page and one book at a time. Here's another one to think about, the compound effect of doing just a little more. I often share this story in my seminars. Russell Stockton, who has been a baseball coach in Houston, Texas, mostly at small colleges, successfully applied the principle of the slight edge. He told his hitters when practice is over, if they chose to to go to the batting cage and hit two buckets of balls, which is approximately 100 swings. He said it would only take about 20 minutes, which is easy to do. But if they took 100 extra swings five days a week, they would have 500 extra swings by the end of the week. He told them they would not be much better at that point, but not to stop. And by the end of the first month they should have 2,000 extra swings. And by then they would begin to start seeing some improvements. And if they did that for all 10 months of the school year, they would have taken 20,000 extra swings of the bat. Now, Coach Stockton convinced seven of his players to buy into this idea the first year he started practicing the compound effect, and as a result they went on to win the conference title. Now, when I was in my early 30s I decided to start running every day without knowing I was doing it. I started applying another aspect of the slight edge. At first I couldn't run very far without cramping up or getting a stitch in my side. But I decided that each day I would run or walk if I had to, or one driveway further before I turned around to head back home. Eventually I was running 6 miles a day and eventually went on to run 10k races and even a half marathon every day. Little by little I was getting better and stronger and healthier and more self confident, which spilled over into the other areas of my life as well. Now here's an interesting fact. Research has shown that what are referred to as micro actions, which are small things done consistently, are the most effective way to create sustainable success. And if you can find a way to make those small actions enjoyable, all the better because we tend to continue to do things that we enjoy doing. Makes sense, doesn't it? For example, on my 20 minute walks I listen to books on tape, podcasts on success, and TED and TEDx talks, which conveniently happen to be about 18 to 20 minutes long, which matches my 20 minute walk. It makes the walks go by much, much quicker and I'm learning valuable information as well. Now another example is when you meditate. You can experiment with doing it in total silence while listening to meditation music or listening to a guided meditation of which there are many online and on YouTube. You can even practice a moving meditation like Tai Chi or Qigong. If you do, I recommend trying out Spring Forest Qigong with Master Chun Yi Lin. Find out which method you enjoy the most and then do it. Now another secret to applying this secret of the compound effect is to keep score of your actions. In our Momentum Mastermind coaching program, we use a daily Habit tracker form that we develop that gives you spaces for writing down your daily success habits. And then we gamify it by having you assign points to completing each thing on the list with the total points adding up to 100. The goal is to get 100 points every day by doing every action. My habit tracker includes meditate, do my gratitude exercise, repeat my affirmations, and visualize my goals as already complete, walk for a minimum of 20 minutes, read for an hour, write or edit 5 or 10 pages a day, spend 10 minutes decluttering, drink 10 glasses of water, take all of my supplements, send out one thank you card and do 20 minutes of yoga or Pilates exercises. I also get points deducted from my score and if I drink alcohol, eat sugar, watch TV for more than an hour a day or if I go to bed later than 11:30. So having a place to keep score is important. It keeps you focused and allows you to see your progress. So start applying this principle of the compound effect today and very soon, I promise you'll begin to see how this practice will indeed give you a slight edge in every area of your life where you apply it. All right, that's it for today and thanks for watching. Now what I'd love you to do is share any thoughts or questions you might have in the comments below. And if you found this video helpful, please make sure you like it. Share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one. And for some additional tools and videos on how to cultivate habits that will accelerate your achievement of your goals in life, check out the Resources page on my website@jackcampfield.com you'll find a ton of free, great stuff there. So thanks again for watching and have a great rest of your day.
