Macro changes through micro situations

I have recently realised that small habits can bring huge changes over a long-term period.

I have always known that if you do something small every day, it'll compound. And over a year or so, you'll start noticing a big change in your life.

Never have I seen this in real life. But in the past few days, something similar happened in front of my eyes.

Backstory

I live in Hyderabad where it can get hot sometimes. To fight the heat we have three water coolers at our place.

Two coolers are on the ground while the third sites on top of two different stools. Both stools are different sizes period. The difference is not that big. it might be a few millimetres.

In the two years of using these three coolers, we always had one problematic cooler. It needed to repair every six or seven months. To fix it, I'd do one of the following:

• get someone to fix it,
• try to fix it myself, or
• replace it with another cooler whichever are not in use.

Recent

Three days ago, One of cooler stop functioning. To repair it I picked up my screwdriver opened it up and tried to see what’s wrong. I saw that two wires are not in contact with the power switch regulator.

Wait, this was like DejaVu. I recalled the last time I open a cooler it was the same issue. The same two wires were not connected to the same regulator.

This made me think "why is it that these coolers or not working". Then it hit me. The problems are not with the coolers, but it’s with the location.

The issue here was the few millimetres difference between two stools. Over a long time, it cost a similar issue.

When we use the cooler the motor vibrates the entire chasse. Moves along but when this on the floor is flat it stabilises the vibrations.

Small changes over a huge time frame can cost you a lot. Had I use the third cooler on the floor itself it would have not needed a repair every now any them.

The clear solution here is to reduce the vibrations irrespective of how small they are.

You can barely see the vibrations and listen until you touch the cooler.

It is at that point you would realise this is the vibrations you won’t even notice them if you look at them from afar.

This is what I learnt.

Small habits do have an effect on your long-term results, even if they are negligible