A focus on purpose yields great progress in things small and large

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear makes a convincing argument for the compounding effects of small, consistent changes. As the book title suggests, small habits need not be related to one another. Whatever benefits are possible from disconnected, individual changes, imagine the extra dimension of compounding that occurs when they are oriented coherently towards the same purpose. Furthermore, consider the additional motivation you can find in starting and continuing small changes when they serve your overarching purpose. Imagine how much overwhelming motivation flows into a small task when it has a visible impact on your supremely important purpose!

While small changes do indeed have an enormous aggregate impact, there are also some few choices we make in life that can easily dwarf them.¹ To prove this point, enumerate a few hallmarks of success in your own life or in the lives of those you know. Consider how they happened. It is much more likely that they came about from one or just a few big decisions or actions than that they came from small sustained changes.

In a way, your habits will raise the floor of your experience compared to the average person, but the ceiling of your experience will much more likely be determined by how you react and respond to those rare opportunities that capture the vast majority of meaning and accomplishment in life. When it comes to the big actions, tiny motivation simply won’t suffice.

It’s more accurate to understand that small habits and big decisions are partners rather than independent phenomena. Often, the decision to begin what will be sustained into a habit is itself a big change. For instance, starting a new career, getting married, joining the military, having a child, enrolling in college, or writing a book all require dramatic initial action, even though continuing them requires a much smaller but sustained effort over time. In both the initiation and the sustainment, you are much more likely to begin and continue activities that are based on a central purpose than those which are not.