Over time, the Accumulation of small helpful or harmful behaviors and inputs produces huge results. According to Lean Thinking, by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, Toyota’s approach is based on the Japanese concept of kaizen, which emphasizes the continual improvement of a system by eliminating muda (waste) via a lot of very small changes. Many small improvements produce huge results. Accumulation isn’t always positive. Think of what would happen to your body if you consumed nothing but fast food, candy bars, and soda for a decade. Eating a single candy bar isn’t a big deal, but eating hundreds of candy bars is. Fortunately, the opposite is true as well: small improvements in your diet, a little more exercise, and a little more sleep can have major effects on your health over time.

Being in the GAIN means you measure yourself backward, against where you were before. You measure your own progress. You don’t compare yourself to something external. You don’t measure yourself against your ideals.

Develop the winning edge; small differences in your performance can lead to large differences in your results.

A fundamental aspect of being in the GAIN is to live your life in a self-determined way. You stop living in the GAP and measuring yourself based on ideals, but rather live based on clear measurables that you yourself have chosen.

Practice mental subtraction to remind yourself of the GAINS in your life. Create a GAIN Tiny Habit Recipe for getting out of the GAP, such as the five-minute rule the women’s soccer coach used.

Making art has taught me that the tiniest smidgen of progress is something to be cherished.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

I tried always to do better: saw always a little further. I tried to stretch myself.

When we allow ourselves to celebrate tiny victories as important and meaningful, we start to understand the incremental nature of change — how one vote can help change our democracy; how raising a child who is whole and loved can help change a nation; how educating one girl can change a whole village for the better.

Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

the famous Emil Coué formula, ‘Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better’,

Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

In a positive environment, a marginal performer’s output goes up. In a negative environment, a good performer’s output goes down.