Minor Decisions, Major Success

A note to young leaders.

On a recent international flight, as I walked down the aisle to the restroom, I counted at least twelve passengers watching movies – and only two reading books.

This is not a moral argument against entertainment. Nobody is obliged to spend a red-eye improving themselves – and civilisation can survive another Marvel film.

But the arithmetic is worth dwelling on.

Reading on a plane is an act of resistance. The temptation is bolted eighteen inches from your face – backlit, free and stocked with every new release.

That’s what makes the aeroplane such a revealing laboratory. The easy alternative is literally staring you in the face.

The same instinct shows itself in a smaller and less conspicuous act: the reader who stops mid-sentence to look up an unfamiliar word.

That small interruption tells you something. Here is a person unwilling to remain even fractionally more ignorant than is necessary. That’s rarer than talent and more useful – because it compounds.

You want those people on your team.

Success is seldom a dramatic act of the will.

Success is a pattern of minor decisions – a thousand small choices between what you want now and what you want more.