It's simple mathematics when you get down to it.

Join me for a quick thought experiment if you would:

Say you do 1.5 days' worth of work in one day.

At the end of one day, you'll have done 1.5 days of work. You're up a half day of work.

At the end of 3 days, you'll have done 4.5 days of work. You're up 1.5 days of work.

At the end of 7 days, you'll have done 10.5 days of work. You're up 3.5 days of work, the better part of another whole week.

Now, some very necessary caveats.

• This is a gross oversimplification.

• It unhealthy to overwork yourself.

• Living by "The Bible of Nonstop Hustle" works for a very rare few. It is not advisable in most instances. It can be seriously deleterious to your physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being.

• Lastly, please DO NOT try to attempt this using the figures above. This is only a thought exercise to illustrate the truth about what happens when you do just a little more. See below.

Now that we've established that the formula works, let's bring it down to something manageable. Compared to your baseline level of investment (mental, emotional, energetic, time), what would happen if you gave 1/10 more each day? That's a little more doable, isn't it?

By giving just 1/10 more each day, you'd earn yourself 36.5 more days worth of growth in the year. You'd live a 13-month year while everyone else was living 12 months!

Of course, this is still a gross oversimplification. And we will get into the mechanics of this later in these pages.

But the truth is: the older I get, the more I realize success is just doing a small extra thing - and repeating that more often than others.