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“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu
You achieve your greatest dreams by breaking them down into small manageable goals and focusing on accomplishing one goal at a time. As you accomplish them, you build momentum that propels you to tackle bigger chunks.

Listen to this fantastic Ted talk for inspiration to pursue your greatness.

Key lessons from the talk.

1. You can accomplish any major task if you break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces.

2. Marginal/small adjustments/improvements produce big results.
He illustrates this point nicely with the career of  Serbian professional tennis player Novak Djokovic. The table below illustrates how marginal improvements in the percentage of points he won took him from the bottom of the back to the top of world tennis. He only needed to improve from 49% to 52% to be ranked 3rd and raking in multiple millions. He only needed to improve from 52% to 55% to become ranked #1 in the world and increase his earnings by more than forty times. Marginal improvements lead to huge results. See the table below produced with data from Stephen Duneier’s amazing presentation.

2004-2005 2006-2010 2011-2016
World Ranking 100+ 3rd in the world 1st in the world
Prize Money $0.3 million per year $5 million per year $14 million per year
% of Matches Won 49% 79% 90%
% of Points Won 49% 52% 55%

Marginal improvements produce a huge impact!

He then goes on to share his own personal story of how marginal improvements took him from a C-minus student who could focus on anything for more than 5-10 minutes to an A-plus student. Marginal improvements have allowed him to do amazing things.

Watch this talk! Amazing!

 

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