http://poppyposts-blog.net/2013/04/27/the-aggregation-of-marginal-gains/
This is the original post where her comment was posted:
http://poppyposts-blog.net/2013/04/26/planning-with-military-precision/
I taught the same thing in Photoshop for making pictures larger. In photoshop if you change the size too much the lines blur and focus is greatly reduced. However, by increasing just 10% at a time you can increase a picture 2 to 3 times larger and still retain a crisp image. Flylady (Flylady.net) taught me over and over again that baby steps still get you moving. AA encourages, progress not perfection. The difficulty arises when I want to know how far I have come. I noticed on more than one occasion that I felt bogged down by my lack of progress. I would whine to my counselor and they would ask me where was I at the year before, 5 years before, 10 years before. (KavinCoach would also ask if I wanted cheese with my whine. :) Day to day progress is sometimes hardly noticeable. Looking at a huge task seems overwhelming, every efficiency expert or motivational speaker encourages their audience to break down a huge task into the smaller task, simpler goals, shorter time pieces. When I look at my life and decide to make it 10% better it is not nearly as overwhelming as talking about a 200% change. I remember an airplane pilot sharing how a plane became lost...the problem was a 1 degree difference at the start of the flight. Changing a flight pattern by 1 degree won't seem much 10 miles later but 500 miles later it can land you in totally different city. Another example that helped me see what it takes to change my life is changing the direction of an oil tanker. Found this at Yahoo: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070604081339AAkf0rL
The immense size of these ships, as well as the heavy loads they carry, mean that each supertanker has enormous inertia.
A crash stop maneuver (from 'full ahead' to 'full reverse') can stop a fully loaded supertanker within approximately three kilometres, which takes about 14 minutes.
The turning diameter is almost two kilometres.
(These values vary according to ship size and weight, of course).
Changing a lifetime of thinking takes time with setbacks and obstacles to impede my progress. In this day and age of instant on, instant breakfast, and high speed everything taking time seems like there must be something wrong. I like to think about the cathederal in Rome that I saw with a mosaic dome that took hundreds of years to complete. A masterpiece takes time and is completed just a bit at a time.
http://www.rome.info/pictures/vatican/images/chapel.jpg
10% at a time gets me where I need to be...I just need to be patient with myself.
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