One Is Not Zero
Common sense, right?
1 ≠ 0.
We all know this, so what do I mean when I bring up this blatantly obvious point? Let’s contextualize this.
Think about productivity. Whenever you’re building a habit, learning a language, going to the gym, doing homework, or telling your family you love them—doing it one time is a lot more than doing it zero times.
It can be overwhelming when you have free time and are faced with a seemingly-infinite set of potential actions. What should you do? Start with one thing, because doing one thing is infinitely better than being paralyzed into doing nothing. Life is overwhelming, but take it one step at a time. One step in the right direction is all you need.
This concept is true with incremental productivity activities such as the ones previously listed, and of course compounds with every iteration. “One Is Not Zero” is even more true when faced with larger principles.
Hitler was one man. Stalin was one man. Jesus was one man. I’m one man. You’re one man (or woman). Yet all of those people, for better or worse, have changed the world.
If you’re struggling to see the importance of doing something, remember that one seemingly small action will compound and ripple out into the world. You never know what will result from one action.
You are two people away from a billion.
If you’re a social person, let’s assume you meet and make connections with roughly a thousand people throughout the course of your life. You have a direct impact on those thousand people. Those thousand people have a direct impact on the thousand people that they meet. That’s a billion people.
If you change someone else’s life, you’re enabling that person to potentially change the life of one, or up to a thousand, lives of the people in their life. As a butterfly effect, that life-changing experience extends to the thousand people that they know.
The accuracy of the math isn’t important. You aren’t likely to make meaningful connections with a thousand people, and the thousand people that they know will likely overlap—somewhat—with your social network. It’s also unlikely that changing one person’s life in a meaningful way is going to directly affect a billion people.
HOWEVER!
At the very least you’ve changed one person’s life. That’s important. If that person, in turn, changes another person’s life, it may be because of you. That’s two people’s lives you’ve changed.
You have no idea how far that will go. Maybe somewhere along the line, the life of a pivotal or highly influential person is radically changed. You may never know it was because of you, but it was. If you think, “I’m one in eight billion people. I can’t do anything,” you’ve already given up. You have more power than you think.
The best thing you can do is what you believe to be right, aided by your conscience and your judgement—to live as best you can in truth and righteousness. You’ll never be able to do everything right, but doing one thing right is infinitely better than doing nothing right.
You never know how far doing the right thing will go, but one thing is for certain: it extends beyond one person and one action. One right move can change the world.
