Consistent Incremental Action does not sound like the sort of strategy that helps you leap to luck. Well that’s because it’s not.
A key principle of The Pursuit of Luck is the “Leap: Increment Dichotomy”. Sometimes you get lucky by taking big leaps by taking risks and getting outside of your comfort zone. Sometimes luck comes from incremental improvement.
I will blog about the “Leap: Increment Dichotomy” another time. Today I want to blog about CIA:Consistent Incremental Action.
We’ve all heard “lucky bitch, she’s so skinny” and “I wish I had a body like that lucky bastard”.
Do you know that there are 25 calories in a heaped teaspoon of sugar? So if you normally have two sugars in your coffee and drink two coffees per day, this equates to 10 pounds that you will lose or not put on a year just be taking daily incremental action to eliminate the sugar.
There are approximately 350 calories burned in every 10,000 steps you take. If you take 10,000 additional steps per day instead of being sedentary then you will lose (or not put on) a staggering 36 pounds in ONE YEAR!
There are thousands of incremental tactics around how to lose weight where the results are simply staggering yet western countries are getting fatter and fatter. Why? Because consistently making an incremental improvement is difficult, it requires discipline and western countries seem to lack it. Yours truly struggles with this same discipline when it comes to calorie consumption.
Similarly, in business and in your career there are staggering successes to be achieved if you can implement systems to consistently incrementally improve your business systems and approach to life.
Read one blog a day for 5 minutes to seek inspiration. Buy one different magazine a month and read it cover to cover to expose yourself to new opportunities. Each week ask something of a stranger. Every week call an old friend or an ex-business associate and chew the fat. Read Google News daily. Every day check out the image at Bing and think about how that image gives you inspiration for your field of work. Blog and tweet your original thoughts. Comment on other peoples blogs three times per week. Each morning before you go to work click http://wordpress.org/showcase/ and read a showcased blog at WordPress. Every Friday at 11am bring your team together and have a one hour brainstorm session about “how to improve XYZ”.
If you consistently adopt small incremental changes in behaviour by the end of the year you will be a far luckier person or company.