The impact of small things

Small things can have a significant impact, and we mistakenly ignore them.

Father Bronques brought this concept to my attention: we overestimate what we can accomplish in a day. Still, we underestimate what we can achieve in an hour.

This is valid for everything. I’m just gonna give the most recent example of this.

This made me look into my life in different ways. And the latest was the number of plastic bottles I drink per year, generating a lot of pollution. Let’s do some math.

I drink at least 2 liters per day, every day. This means I drink around 15 liters per week.

I use bottles of 6 liters. So, I’m using 2,5 per week.

Now the scary number: this represents at least 130 bottles per year. One hundred and thirty.

I don’t even know how much plastic that represents, but it’s a lot.

Suffice to say that the week before writing this, I started using more tap water, and water bottles are lasting much longer.

This week I haven’t made much progress on saving money and plastic bottles. But when I zoom out and see that I can save hundreds of euros and thousands of bottles for the rest of my life, I get excited.

Apply this to your sleep, weight, or craft.

Imagine how much things can change in the next 20 to 50 years if you make little and incremental progress every day.

For example, if you eat less 50 calories per day. In 3 years, it can make a difference of 5 kilos (11 lbs) or more.

If you sleep 15 more minutes per day, it represents additional 91 hours of rest.

Stop looking for instant gratification. Zoom out. You can lose weight, you can feel rested, you can write that book. Be committed.

You need around 15 to 60 minutes per day to build your best long-term self.

If you write 15-30 minutes per day at around 200 words per session. That’s 73,000 words in a year. That’s 1 million words in 13 years and 9 months.

I’m amazed by the impact of these small things in the long term.