Achieving any goal requires a step-by-step method. The person determined to achieve the greatest achievements learns that the steps of progress are taken one by one. A house is built one brick at a time. In football, the championship is won by playing one match at a time. Big stores grow with a new customer each time. Every great success consists of a series of small successes.
Eric Sevareid, a fairly well-known author, wrote in Reader Digest (April 1957) that the best advice in his name was the “next mile” principle.
“When I changed my job and started writing a quarter-million-word book, I couldn’t find the strength to think over the whole project. I was almost giving up on my deepest source of pride in my profession. I just tried to think about the next paragraph. Not the next page or chapter. So for six months I did nothing but think about the next paragraph, and the book wrote itself.”
“Many years ago I was writing daily shorts for the radio broadcast. Now the total has passed 2000 pieces. If they wanted to contract me to write 2000 pieces then, of course, I wouldn’t have accepted due to the size of the volume. However, I was asked to write only one. Then another one. And here is the number of what I wrote in the end.”
The step-by-step method is the most logical way to achieve a goal. The formula I’ve heard about quitting smoking and that works for my friends more than anyone else is what I call the ‘clock by hour’. In order to achieve that absolute goal – quitting the habit – never to smoke again, the person decides not to smoke for the next hour. When the hour ends, the person extends this decision for the next hour. Later, as the desire to drink decreases, this period is extended to two hours, then to a day. Finally, the goal is reached. The person who wants to get rid of this habit at once cannot be successful because he cannot stand the psychological pain. An hour is easy; Infinite is difficult.
David J. Schwartz – “The Magic of Thinking Big”
