Dave and I were amazed by the fundamental points that Jeff Olson made in his book The Slight Edge. If you haven’t read it yet or listened to the audio book, we highly recommend it. The audio CDs are great since there is a 20+ minute exclusive with Jeff Olson at the beginning. 

Jeff so strongly believes in and has used this slight edge philosophy to create success in all areas of his life. Like us, Jeff has allowed Jim Rohn to be one of his mentors and The Slight Edge is based closely on the philosophies of Jim. One of Jim’s philosophies that Jeff uses is that success occurs over the progression of time. You must plant, cultivate and then harvest to follow the journey to success. In Jeff’s mind, planting and cultivating involve making every decision with your desired result in mind since every decision you make either takes you up the success curve or down the failure curve. You can’t stay in one spot; you are always moving either up or down.

Successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do and according to Jeff, the things that successful people do are mundane and easy to do. The factor that turns these mundane easy things into success is the progression of time and the resulting compounding of the results. Successful people just keep doing these chosen proven actions over and over again until success comes.

The problem that most people have that are not successful is that the easy mundane decisions and actions are also easy not to do as emphasized by Jeff Olson & Jim Rohn. It is easy not to do these easy things because the results do not happen quickly since there is the old progression of time factor that always comes into play. With no immediate results many people give up when if they continued over time success would come.

There are numerous slight edge decisions that push you up the success curve as well as many slight edge decisions that pull you down the failure curve. The slight edge decision to eat a Big Mac is made because there are no immediate negative health effects. But if that poor slight edge decision is made again and again, over time there will surely be a negative health consequence. As Jeff stresses, we must know that every decision we make matters. Therefore, we must make every decision that will better us and move us closer to success. If we remain consistent in our proper use of The Slight Edge philosophy on a daily basis, we will be will on our journey to success.