While most people look for a few big improvements, usually without success, a wise person will look for a lot of small, even seemingly insignificant, areas of life to take action and improve on.

Let’s take an example that most of us can relate to – maintaining a healthy weight for our height and age. While I am currently pretty close to my ideal weight and in good shape physically, that has not always been the case. I have been as much as 30 pounds heavier than I am now, but I did not lose all of the weight at once. It took the aggregation of marginal gains to reach my current weight.

I did change what I was eating some, but the biggest impact was just choosing to eat a little less than I did previously. I also started exercising on a more regular basis, but I did not start our running a 10k every morning like I do most days now. It was small incremental changes in habits over a period of months that made the difference.

It's so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making better decisions on a daily basis. Almost every habit that you have — good or bad — is the result of many small decisions over time. And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change.