What exactly are those things? What are the actions that move usupward on that curve—and what are the actions that drive us down? I‘ll tell you what they are, in a single word.
Simple.
The things that take you out of failure and up toward survival and success are simple. So simple, in fact, that it‘s easy to overlook them. Extremely easy to overlook them. It‘s easy to overlook them because when you look at them, they seem insignificant. They‘re not big, sweeping things that take huge effort. They‘re not heroic or dramatic. Mostly they‘re just little things you do every day and that nobody else even notices. They are things that are so simple to do yet successful people actually do them, while unsuccessful people only look at them and don‘t take action. Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise everyday and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these "little virtues" or "success habits." I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge.