Incremental Improvement

It may take six years of hard work to be an overnight success. It may take longer. When I won the 24 Hour USATF championship last year, nobody in the ultrarunning community knew who I was. Yet I went into that race hoping to run 160 miles, and I came pretty close. This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight.

People want the get rich quick scheme, but simple compounding interest and saving a large portion of your pay will ultimately build wealth far more reliably than most far fetched schemes. The incremental improvement that comes from persistence and consistency will trump the shortcut 99% of the time. Lance Armstrong took the shortcut, and it worked for well over a decade, but ultimately it forever tarnished his reputation.

I want to simply encourage you in whatever it is you do, such as trying to run consistently, get rid of a bad habit, or save more money, to do the little things today and this week that will help in the long term. If you focus on the little incremental improvements long enough, you will end up with a very optimized system.