Easy To Do; Easy Not To Do.

I

In 1790, Benjamin Franklin left a strange gift in his will: 1,000 pounds each to Boston and Philadelphia, with strings attached. None of it could be spent for 100 years (and much of it for 200). In the meantime it was to be loaned in small amounts to young tradesmen, the interest folded back in, year after year.

People thought it was an odd gesture from an old man. A thousand pounds wasn't going to change a city. By 1990, what remained in the two funds was worth more than $6 million, and that was after Boston had already drawn on its share to build a trade school. No windfall. No lucky break. Just small amounts doing their quiet work for two centuries.

In Jeff Olson's "The Slight Edge", his whole argument fits in one sentence: the things that build a great life are easy to do, and they're just as easy not to do. Skip any of them today and nothing bad happens. That's the trap. The choice that doesn't matter today is the one that matters most over ten years.

Scripture said it long before Olson did. When God's people came home from exile and started rebuilding the temple, the foundation looked so unimpressive that the old-timers wept. God's answer in the book of Zechariah:

Notice what He rejoices in. Not the finished temple. The beginning. The small, unglamorous, nobody's-watching start.

Which brings me to mornings. Franklin got up at five and asked himself one question before anything else: "What good shall I do this day?" Long before him, Mark tells us Jesus got up while it was still dark and went off alone to pray. Before the crowds. Before anyone needed anything from Him.

Mornings matter because the morning is where the slight edge gets decided. It's the one part of the day nobody else has claimed yet. And it comes down to a few small deposits:

READ. God's Word, or something that nourishes you. You become what you feed on, a few pages at a time.

WRITE. Get the anxious thoughts out of your head and onto paper, where you can take them captive. Write down what you're reading so it sticks. It forces you to think. A pen in your hand is how intention becomes a habit.

PRAY or meditate. Gratitude and humility don't show up on their own. They get established in the quiet, before the day has a chance to argue with them.

EXERCISE. Move. A little something every day helps prevent a big adjustment later. That's true of your body, and it's true of everything else on this list.

The same law follows you to work. One call to a past client just to check in. One handwritten note. One conversation with a referral partner. Fifteen minutes learning something new about your craft. A daily look at your numbers so they never surprise you. None of it will move the needle today. All of it will move the needle this year.

But here's where I have to be honest with you, and with myself. I just handed you a list, and a list has never changed anyone.

We've all written the list. We've all kept it for nine days. Olson's point is that our actions flow out of how we think, and until the thinking changes, the list is just one more thing to feel guilty about. If we still believe deep down that small things don't count, we will skip them the first morning we're tired. Behavior doesn't change because I wrote it down. It changes when I start believing that the small thing done today is the big thing, and then prove that belief with discipline, one unremarkable day after another, long before there's any evidence it's working.

Franklin never saw a dime of that $6 million. He just believed in what small, faithful deposits become.

None of this is hard. Every bit of it is easy to skip. Nobody will applaud you, and you won't feel different by lunch. But God is very good at compounding.

Where have you been treating a discipline like a task to check off instead of a person you're becoming? Do you really believe small things matter? Belief systems are so strong you simply cannot operate against them. Change your thinking, change your behaviors, change your life. Don't despise the little things, recognize they are the building blocks to your future.