Summary
Surprisingly, the author, Jeff Olson doesn’t spend much time defining the Slight Edge. He gives plenty of examples, but absolutely skimps on the definition. Ergo, what follows is my interpretation.
The Slight Edge is having faith that unintimidating positive actions will bring compounded positive effects over time. The Slight in “Slight Edge“ is derived from the belief that what separates winning and losing in life is slight.
[Decisions]
One key takeaway I had from The Slight Edge is the idea that there’s no such thing as a neutral decision. Every decision takes you in a positive direction, or negative one. Choose wisely.
Slightly different choices have the potential to major differences in outcomes later. A choice to drink water instead of soda for example. A decision to have a second drink. A decision to go to the Yoga class you don't feel up for. The decision to meditate.
If the Slight Edge is right, and you can have an incredible life by consistently taking unintimidating positive actions — why doesn’t everybody have an incredible lifestyle? Answer: easiness, myths, and miscalculations.
Unintimidating positive actions are easy to do. But, and here’s the rub, they’re easy NOT to do too. Reading 10 pages from a good book each night. Walking for 30 minutes a day. Making your bed each morning. Demonstrating daily appreciation for your spouse. I think most people would agree that the above are easy things to do, but in another sense, these same people are likely to agree that these things are NOT easy to do too. All you have to do is monitor how frequently these people actually do these things.
Myths, Jeff Olson alleges, have caused us to believe that success is some big dramatic act. To Jeff, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Success in the real-world looks very mundane and unsexy — the type of stuff the media never picks up on. Rags-to-riches stories are always fascinating when recounted. However, if you were able to monitor a soon-to-be successful person’s day-to-day, most of their activities would be as dull as a box of old butterknives. A popular example of this is Mr. Money Moustache. He retired before the age of 30. How? By spending less and saving more than half of is income. Nothing sexy about that.
Miscalculations have to do with our inability to understand the ramifications of a collection of actions. For example, if you actually read 10 pages of a day from a good book, you will have read 3650 pages over the course of year. Assuming an average book size of 250 pages, that would be 14 books completed in a year. If the median number of books read is 6 (which seems a little high to me), reading more than twice that number will likely give you an “edge.” In the moment, not reading 10 pages doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Drinking soda instead of water doesn’t seem like that big a deal — at least in the moment. But, and here’s the rub, it is only through these individually insignificant but collectively consequential actions that massive rewards are attained.
The person that reads 10 pages a day at the end of year ends up reading at least twice as many books as 50% of people who read books. The person that mostly consumes water with her meals will shed and avoid unhelpful pounds and get her that much closer to having a beach-ready body. The person that invests their money from an early age sets herself up for enjoying the benefits of compound interest.
The Slight Edge is a philosophy. And, according to the Jeff Olson, philosophy precedes attitude. More explicitly, philosophy influences attitude. Attitude influence action. Action influences results. And results influence your lifestyle. Failure to work on a broken philosophy will sabotage your efforts.
If you read my summary, you really don’t need to read the book. Despite the audiobook not being very long (~3 hours), it was still too long as the ideas aren’t all that original. There’s material in the book from Jim Rohn (what’s easy to do is easy not to do). The concept the author espouses is covered in Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect.” Darren made the same exact claim Jeff makes in the Slight Edge.
Bottom line, there’s nothing really new here, but as it is with many self-help books, maybe this book contains the example or story that flips the switch for you and actually gets you to act on the thing you know you should do.