The Daily Ripple Effect

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with some friends. We were discussing what we were doing that day which would have an impact on our lives down the road. I couldn’t think of much. My day consisted of going to work and then going home. The only other thing I had to get done was on the drive home, I had to return some keys to an apartment complex.

I couldn’t think of anything that was going to make a lasting impact on my agenda for the day.

My friends disagreed.

They informed me that the simple task of returning my keys on that day will have huge impact on my life. My wife and I had moved to a smaller place to save money for a house. We’ve nearly cut our budget in half by going to this smaller place. If I hadn’t returned the keys that day then we would’ve had to pay an extra months rent.  This would’ve changed our current positive situation into a very bad one. We would’ve had to pay the cheap rent plus the expensive one. We’d probably be acruing major debt and stepping further away from our dreams of home ownership. Even worse, I’d still be sleeping on the couch.

I suppose one can call this “the ripple effect”. It is a very suitable analogy. The little tasks which we believe are monotonous and of no importance are some of the things that make the largest impact on our lives. The problem is that these little tasks take the majority of our time in the day and we hate doing them. The unimportant ones get pushed to the side for a later date or forgotten about entirely. We want to focus on the urgent things, whether important or not, because we can see the results right away.

But what if we chose to look past the urgent and into the impactful?

What could your life look like if you focused more on the little monotonous tasks that make up your day rather than the big and exciting ones?