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1-Page Summary of The Slight Edge

Overview

In his book, The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success and Happiness (2005), author Jeff Olson explains how to make the most of small improvements in your life. Although it may seem like success happens overnight, usually a lot of hard work has been put into that success over a long period of time. Similarly, if you’re struggling to succeed at something, then you’ve probably developed some habits that are holding you back from achieving your goals. Small changes can have big effects over time; this idea is called “the slight edge.” By learning how to use the slight edge in your favor, anyone can improve any aspect of their lives by making incremental improvements every day.

Success and failure are determined by choices we make. For example, a person who gets promoted at work does so by working harder and seeking more training in his field. If he becomes complacent after the promotion, he will likely get demoted or lose all of his hard-earned success. The same applies to other fields as well. A woman who saves part of her paycheck every month is building up a large nest egg for retirement on which she can live off of later in life. A man who never exercises or eats poorly will become weaker and unable to fend off health problems later in life due to poor eating habits and lack of exercise in younger years.

Most people know what steps they should take to overcome their problems, especially when the problems are in areas such as health and finances. For example, a woman who wants to lose weight might join a gym and start dieting because she knows that healthy food and exercise will help her achieve her goal. However, knowledge is useless if people don’t realize that achieving success won’t happen overnight. Human psychology is geared toward instant gratification; it’s not difficult for someone to choose a salad for lunch but it can be difficult for them to commit to making good choices consistently over time while delaying immediate gratification. If people don’t believe that all their choices matter or lead towards success or failure, they’re unlikely to make the right decisions consistently over time and will likely fail at reaching their goals through discipline alone without consistency of action as well.

This report discusses the eighth anniversary edition of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

Key Point 1: The slight edge constantly exerts its effect, creating either an advantage or a disadvantage in any given situation.

Some people think that some actions don’t matter, but they actually do. They have an effect on your life and can change the course of it. People should be aware of this fact and make sure to think through their decisions carefully before taking them.

If a society wants to reduce crime, it needs to look at the big picture. For example, if you want to know why there’s less crime in recent years, you have to think about how people are born and raised. In the 1970s, before abortion was legalized nationwide by the Supreme Court of the United States, many women who were poor or teenagers got pregnant and had babies. Those children would have been more likely than average to commit crimes when they grew up because they’d be from families that didn’t have much money and their mothers wouldn’t be able to take care of them properly. But since Roe v Wade became law in 1973 (and was upheld by later decisions), those pregnancies could be ended early on. That meant fewer children were being born into poverty-stricken households where criminal activity is statistically more likely. It wasn’t until decades after Roe v Wade that experts noticed this pattern—and even then some politicians refused to acknowledge it as one of the causes for lower crime rates. If policy makers understood what factors lead up to reduced crime rates over time, maybe they would realize that small actions can make a big difference when repeated over long periods of time