“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.” African proverb.

I enjoyed watching some of the action from the Tokyo Olympic games.

Many events illustrated how tiny margins make all the difference to results.

One such example was the men’s 4 x 100 metre relay. The gold medal was won by Italy with a winning time of 37.50 seconds. Great Britain finished second to win the silver medal. Their time was 37.51 seconds and therefore the winning margin was one hundredth of a second (0.01).

In life, there’s often a small difference between winning and losing, success and failure, hitting or missing a target, securing a victory in a poll. I’m sure that you can think of countless examples from your own life experiences where a tiny amount of additional effort changed the course of events.

It maybe the extra half an hour that you spent revising for a test or exam rather than watching TV got you the extra marks to help you to pass or get a better grade. You may have put in extra time when learning to drive to revise your highway code which helped you answer a question you just read about and led to you passing the test. If you play sport, for example golf, the extra practice time on your putting may have clinched you a victory in your local club’s championship event.

An extra hour preparing for an important customer meeting may have enabled you to be prepared for a question you were asked and helped to clinch the deal. One final phone call or e mail to a prospective customer may have secured a meeting which led to a large project being sold and, in the process, securing a valuable long term customer relationship.

As I said earlier, tiny margins make all the difference and can determine the outcome of a situation. We all sometimes mistakenly think that we have to keep taking massive action to get a result. The fact is that small incremental steps towards a goal accumulate into massive progress when applied consistently.

One action per day applied every day of the year, towards a specific goal amount to 365 separate actions and somehow seems bigger when you look at it like that!

Fifteen minutes of focus a day amounts to over 90 hours in a year. if you have an ambition to publish a book and write one page every weekday (giving yourself a break at the weekend) after one year you would have written a 260-page book!

This week’s quotation is a reminder to always keep in mind the power of small! A small action is better than no action because nothing is achieved without some sort of action! It could be that 1% extra time; focus or effort will bring outstanding results in your life. It could bring the breakthrough that you are looking for in your career, relationships, goals, hobby or projects.

Why not take a few moments this week to pause and reflect and ask yourself where you could apply one per cent additional focus, time or effort. What impact could this have on your life and results? What will be your first action step?

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk