The first time I ever heard of The Slight Edge Theory, it was during my first listening of The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy about 11 years ago. As an example, it states that the winning racehorse wins approximately 10-100 times more money than an average racehorse, but wins the races sometimes only by a few inches. In The Psychology of Selling, Brian goes one step further and states that the same thing about us as businesspeople, that the salesperson that gets the sale and the salesperson that does not get the sale differ only by about 1%-4%, but the difference in commissions (or revenues) is enormous at the end of the year. I have also heard The Slight Edge Theory mentioned by the late Jim Rohn, as well as the fantastic book “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson.

This morning I had a brush with The Slight Edge. I accidentally woke up a little bit earlier. The clock on my coffee maker accidentally got set an hour ahead so coffee was ready when I accidentally got up. While I was rebooting my computer and preparing it for the rigors I put it through everyday, I checked my email on my Blackberry and noticed that the usual stack of emails I have to sift through in the morning weren’t there yet. Part of my morning ritual is to retweet Seth Godin’s blog (when I feel it is applicable). This morning it was the first tweet for me to review, saving me from what is sometimes a time consuming process.

It’s not something that I’ve never noticed before. It’s not like I’ve never heard the expression “the early bird gets the worm.” It’s just neat to sometimes experience a universal truth all over again…a kind of reaffirming sense of discovering something new, but something I’ve always known. Let’s see what else I can re-discover today!