Review: “The Slight Edge: Secret to a Successful Life” by Jeff Olson

This is a first for me but OMG, this is an amazing book. I haven’t pummeled through a book in one weekend while watching my two boys by myself in a long time. This is the first book in a while that I was up reading at 5 in the morning.

I got this book for free in a Beachbody Game Plan training class last year. It stayed in the shelf for months. I wished I started reading this month’s ago when I got it. Bonus points to Beachbody for have a real focus on their coaches’ personal development overall, not just on fitness.

The premise of the book is that the difference between the 5% that are successful and the rest (95%) that are not ‘as successful’ is the slight edge.

This is definitely not a quick fix book. With concepts such as “the penny” and “steady wins the race”, this book encompasses all I’ve observed in successful people I admire, that they focused on their development in a steady way. There is no shortcut to success, it’s a steady pace of “slight” activities that (the magic I found) “compounds”. Basically, the more you take slight steps to your own development, the more these slight steps yield better impact on your life and success.

Another thing that struck me is that these slight steps are not only easy to do but also easy (in my terms easier) not to do. This is because not doing them is (a) the norm and (b) has no noticeable negative impact.

I highly recommend this book. As a bonus the book comes with a list of “life transforming” resources (books) at the end to further your development. I was quite proud to see in the list a bunch of books I already went through in the past few years of my striving for development. That means I’m sort of in the right direction, if not the right path. Good stuff.

Unfortunately I didn’t see this book as an ebook so you’ll have to go the non-digital route. However it’s a light book and a relatively quick read (under 200 pages).