Saturday, July 25, 2009

Making Big with Small

Four Lessons in The Art of the Small
So our little metaphor — of drops of water falling on an ocean, or on a rock — contains in it four lessons that we’ll call The Art of the Small (only slightly related to the Jedi Force technique):

1. One person can make an impact. Don’t feel that it’s hopeless. You don’t need to be someone famous or powerful to have an impact. You can make a difference, you can change things — if you focus on The Art of the Small.

2. Concentrate your efforts on smaller and smaller areas. When your efforts are diffused over a wide area, they won’t have much of an impact. So focus on smaller areas, and your efforts will be felt more fully. It could take time for change to happen, but keep that focus narrow.

3. Try to find an area that will cause a tipping point. You’ll have the biggest impact if you can change something that will in itself cause further changes — the rock that causes the avalanche. This isn’t an easy thing, to find that pressure point, that spot that will cause everything else to change. It takes practice and experience and luck and persistence, but it can be found.

4. Don’t try to beat an ocean. You’ll lose. Instead, focus on small changes that will spread.

I was inspired by The Art of the Small: How to Make an Impact. Most challenging of the four lessons is "Try to find a tipping point." This is one of the reasons why I like to explore at the intersections of ideas. Perhaps I'll be lucky to find an intersection that will provide an easy tipping point.

It seems pretty intersectable.
Don

Posted via web from Intersectable

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