In his latest TED talk, Bill Gates said that the goal was to stop outbreaks before they become pandemics.

I heard Tony Robbins once say that we should kill the monster while it is small before it is eating the city.

A few thousand years ago the sage, Lao Tzu, said that the journey of 1,000 miles starts from beneath your feet.

See the theme?

Start early. Start small.

From poet David Whyte:

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

There is something so unappealing about working small. We love riding in on the horse with our sword ready to fend off the invaders. We love the heroics in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter. We love the special kind of success that resides just on the other side of gnarly long shots.

But, more often, big wins come from small moves. It’s the boring things we do every day. It’s the uncomfortable conversations we choose to have. It’s the one additional sales call. It’s the recurring automatic investments that are debited from your paychecks.

The excitement happens when we work big. The magic happens when we work small.