It Starts With A Little.

Everything starts with just a little.

Before the downpour, there is always just a little bit of rain.

Before the flood, there is always just a trickle squeezing through the dam.

Before the typhoon, there is always a tide creeping just a little higher than usual.

Before the big things, the little things come first.

Yet, we seem to chase it in reverse?

We neglect the small steps.

We neglect the easy things.

We neglect the optional tasks.

Even though we’d be better because of them, we chase the bigger things first.

You might argue that it’s logical?

Who would choose to sweep the floor of the stage, when they could be on stage.

Assuming that the here and now was the only thing that mattered, would you choose to sweep?

I wouldn’t.

There’s clearly so much more to gain in the pursuit of bigger things.

Surely, it must actually be illogical to not neglect the little things?

If life were simply about the present, that would be true — but it isn’t.

What about the future?

Imagine a gigantic boulder.

One downpour will do nothing to it.

A hundred downpours will do nothing to it.

Ten thousand downpours will do nothing to it.

But a million showers of rain?

The cracks would begin to become inevitable.

And our small efforts are no different.

The boulder would’ve never considered each downpour a threat to it’s existence, individually.

But, collectively?

That’s a completely different story.

We forget that collectively, all of our little efforts mean much more than the bigger ones.

You have to treat the journey you’re on like a marathon.

Yes, there will be critical junctures in the marathon which make or break your finish, but ultimately, the journey is just a collection of millions of small steps.

There is nothing more important than the small steps.

The daily commitments.

The things that we could overlook.

Those drops of rain are what usher in the seasons of downpour — they are the journey itself.

If you want to be primed for opportunity,

If you want to be ready for your promotion,

If you want to be ready to take the next big step,

You must have treated all the little preluding steps with the same vigour and expectancy as you do the big ones.

The foolish vs. the diligent farmer

Imagine yourself as a farmer.

In order for you to feed your family and maintain your livelihood, you must have sown your seeds and catered to them, right?

Right now, you are the foolish farmer.

Despite knowing your obligation, you neglect your duties.

On some days, you remember to regulate the temperature of your plants.

On others, you remember to water them.

On most days, you do nothing.

Nothing but watch the fields with pride, expectation, and admiration.

You look at how well each row is arranged and how beautiful the final result will be once the expected time has lapsed.

You are so content. Despite being so half-hearted.

It’s no surprise that after 3 months, 70% of the produce is not fit for use.

And this is who you are.

No different from a foolish farmer.

Dumbfounded at the fact that the effort you didn’t put in is actually your reality.

And what hurts the most is, you know who you could’ve been.

The farm next to you is home to a diligent farmer.

Every day, they water their produce.

They sweat and tire from the effort they put into maintaining their crops.

They tenderly water every last seed, bud, and stalk.

They look objectively at their field and wonder how they can change and improve to maximise the harvest.

They put their whole heart into every small step.

It’s no wonder that they reaped what they sowed.

The only difference was that their effort started with a little.

Just like how a drizzle comes before a downpour, your effort starts small and grows into a lot.

But what if I can’t see the downpour?

The beauty is, we are not droplets of rain—we're humans.

It might feel like you’ve been raining on your situation time after time and nothing has changed.

But you cannot give up.

Think back to the janitor and the performer.

Imagine that they have the exact same skillset.

One chose the stage prematurely, and the other stuck to the little.

Every day the janitor sweeps, they learn every nook and cranny of the stage.

They see the perspective of each and every audience member by sweeping in-between their seats.

They learn the ins and outs of the backstage, production, media, and management just by quietly sweeping and observing.

They learn to appreciate each and every one of the small efforts, with every sweep of dust.

What they were unaware of while quietly sweeping, was that the little drops were moulding them into a tidal wave.

Those drops gave them a new perspective that someone prematurely thrown into the deep end would never experience.

When given the same opportunity, resources, and experience, who would perform better?

The one who chose to be a janitor, or the one who chose the stage?

Naturally, the janitor. Because they saw more than the here and now.

Sounds fantastical, no?

Okay. I’ll show you just how common the "janitor" is.

The suits analogy.

If you’ve watched Suits, think of Mike Ross.

Just like the janitor, he had no external qualifications for the ‘superstar role’ yet when opportunity knocked, he was ready for it.

Why?

Because he put his whole heart into the small steps.

Because he hadn’t taken the traditional route, he had fresh eyes and a novel zeal.

The opportunity to practice law for one of New York City’s three biggest law firms, was nothing but luck—an opportunity.

But.

He knew the insides and outs of the law, and that was a product of his effort — nothing more or less.

Irrespective of his lack of a law degree, his past efforts allowed him to walk through the door when opportunity called.

If he had neglected anything in the past, the opportunity would’ve slipped through his fingers.

That’s the point.

The small steps you think mean nothing now could make or break a future you have no idea is coming.

And it won’t be possible to prepare when the opportunity arrives by surprise.

Still need more convincing?

The Janitor in real life.

Think of an apprentice.

Every last apprentice is hired because they have the potential to grow, but lack something.

Burning with passion and expectation, they often find themselves flooded with tasks the established don’t want.

Stuck with the mundane.

Just like the janitor sweeping, as they tackle the heaps of little things forced on top of them each day, they work in order to transcend their current and one day take centre stage.

The mistakes of an apprentice

In some avenue of life, all of us will be ‘apprentices’, someone lacking something yet still dreaming of more.

Ryan Holiday describes the issue well when he writes about the famous epigrammist Martial:

“Here’s the problem: like most of us with our internships and entry-level positions (or later on, publishers, bosses, or clients), Martial absolutely hated every minute of it.”

He seemed to believe that this system somehow made him a slave.

“Aspiring to live like some country squire, like the patrons he serviced, Martial wanted money and an estate that was all his own.

There, he dreamed, he could finally produce his works in peace and independence.

As a result, his writing often drags with a hatred and bitterness about Rome’s upper crust, from which he believed he was cruelly shunted aside.”

For all his impotent rage, what Martial couldn’t see was that it was his unique position as an outsider to society that gave him such fascinating insight into Roman culture that it survives to this day.

Instead of being pained by such a system, what if he’d been able to come to terms with it?

What if — gasp — he could have appreciated the opportunities it offered?”

There are two critical points Ryan Holiday raises.

Point 1:

• We get so worked up by what we want to be doing, that we forget what we’re currently doing is building us for our future.

The exact thing that we want to be doing.

What most people misunderstand is that you aren’t enough right now.

That’s the reason you’re an apprentice.

You need the environment you’re in.

You need to deal with the mundane over and over.

You need to experience everything.

Well, why?

It’s the same reason you’re asking why.

Because you think you’re ready.

Imagine an apprentice being thrown in the deep end, left with the most important client to close a new deal — left with nothing but a brief and a file of information.

99.9% would sink catastrophically.

Because you need to master the small steps first.

If a marathon is millions of little steps, who do you think you are to ignore the lessons on how to take them and rush onto the starting line?

Point 2:

• Our position as a learner, gives us a different perspective than the established. That’s why apprentices are valuable.

YOUR LACK OF IS VALUABLE.

Do you think firms can’t outsource or recruit experienced people to do the jobs they’re paying you to learn?

There is something invaluable about difference because it leads to a change in perspective.

How do you approach the little things differently?

How can you make each small step even smaller?

How differently do you handle numerous tasks at once?

Difference always leads to inspiration — to novelty.

That inspiration will be the final piece for your hijack of the centre stage.

But to get inspiration, guess what you have to do?

Start with the little.

Even if we cannot see the effects of our efforts immediately, over time, those small steps are exactly what we needed.

You just need to keep pouring.

It all starts with a little.

LM