How We Do the Small Things

... is how we do the big things

Apr 12, 2024

In a recent episode of The Seen and the Unseen, my friend Deepak VS said something that has stuck with me:

How we do the small things is how we do the big things.

I’ve found different versions of this great quote online, attributed to different people, and it reminded me another of my favourite quotes — Annie Dillard once said:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

I’ve done a post and an episode before about how I’ve tried to internalise Dillard’s insight. And Deepak’s quote resonated with me because it sums up a learning that I came to late in life. If I had believed that how we do the small things determine how we do the big things, I would have achieved more and found greater happiness.

The young me was a daydreamer. I would think of all the grand things I wanted to achieve — and not so much of what it takes to achieve grand things. I lacked patience to work hard to learn anything. When I did work hard, it was a sprint to get something done on deadline, and not part of a marathon to make myself better.

Today, I’ve learnt to play to play. But back then, I was only playing to win, and so I could not possibly have won because I didn’t even understand the game.

The Boss Sings Voodoo Nonsense

While reading Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run, I came across this great chapter about what happened when Springsteen first saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show. Springsteen was seven then — and so shook up that he decided he had to have a guitar, even if the family could not afford it. He writes:

The next day I convinced my mom to take me to Diehl’s Music on South Street in Freehold. There, with no money to spend, we rented a guitar. I took it home. Opened its case. Smelled its wood (still one of the sweetest and most promising smells in the world), felt its magic, sensed its hidden power. I held it in my arms, ran my fingers over its strings, held the real tortoiseshell guitar pick in between my teeth, tasted it, took a few weeks of music lessons . . . and quit. It was TOO FUCKIN’ HARD!

He told his mom there was no sense in continuing to spend money renting the guitar. He writes:

The sunny morning I had to return the guitar, I stood in front of six or so of the neighborhood guys and gals in my backyard. I gave my first and last show for quite a while: I held the guitar . . . I shook it . . . I shouted at it . . . I banged on it . . . I sang voodoo nonsense . . . I did everything but play it . . . all to their laughter and great amusement. I sucked. It was a joyful and silly-assed pantomime. That afternoon, sad but a little relieved, I dropped the guitar off back at Diehl’s Music. It was over for now, but for a moment, just a moment, in front of those kids in my backyard . . . I smelled blood.

When he grew older, he did get a guitar again, and he did put in the hard yards to learn the thing. He wrote songs, he formed a band, he went touring. At one point, Springsteen’s early band, Steel Mill, showed up at a venue in San Francisco called Family Dog for an audition.

I recollect there were three or four bands auditioning that sunny afternoon. The first two weren’t much, so we confidently took the stage and played well. We played about twenty minutes of the stuff that had made us superstars back home and didn’t doubt we’d get the gig. After our set, the fourth band played. They were good. They were musically sophisticated, with several good vocalists and some very good songs. They didn’t have the show that we did but that didn’t seem to concern them. They just played . . . very, very well. They got the gig. We lost out.

Later, back home, Springsteen’s mind went back not to their successes on the road but to that one band which was better than them.

I came up against some real talent and held my own, but the band that took us out at the Family Dog stayed with me. They had something we didn’t, a certain level of sophisticated musicality. They were better than us and that didn’t sit well with me. It’s not that I didn’t expect to come up against superior talent; that happens, it’s the way God planned it. I was fast, but like the old gunslingers knew, there’s always somebody faster, and if you can do it better than me, you earn my respect and admiration and you inspire me to work harder. I wasn’t afraid of that. I was concerned with not maximizing my own abilities, not having a broad or intelligent enough vision of what I was capable of. I was all I had. I had only one talent. I was not a natural genius. I would have to use every ounce of what was in me—my cunning, my musical skills, my showmanship, my intellect, my heart, my willingness—night after night, to push myself harder, to work with more intensity than the next guy just to survive untended in the world I lived in. As I sat there in the black, I knew when we got back home, there would have to be some changes made.

This is Bruce fuckin’ Springsteen saying that he was not a natural genius and he would have to work hard. And let me tell you something right here: no one is a natural genius. We have talents to a lesser or greater degree, but it is a waste unless we work hard at the small things.

When Virat Kohli first started batting in the nets, well before he had started shaving, he had to focus on the small things to get better. Sure, he probably got there with great hand-eye coordination, but now he had to cultivate all the good habits that have to be reflexive in a great batsman. He had to work on his footwork, the angle of the elbow while moving into a drive, the movement of the shoulder into the line, the balance of the body, the stillness of the head. And only after hours and days and weeks and months and years of consicious practice could some of those become internalised to the point that an onlooker could say, ‘Genius!’

Musicians will tell you about how much riyaaz matters. Writers will speak about the importance of habit. In my memorable episode with him, Abhinandan Sekhri told me a great anecdote about Gulzar, whom he knows well. Gulzarsaab, he says, writes every day. He may not have a specific project he is working on, but that is incidental. He writes every day anyway. It is his riyaaz.

And even riyaaz can be a misleading word. Riyaaz implies you are practising to get somehere. But in my mind, riyaaz is the somewhere you want to reach. The small things are the big things.

Pebbles in an Avalanche

During my writing course, when I give exercises to the participants in the last week, I have two unusual conditions for them. One, don’t use any word with more than two syllables. Two, don’t use adjectives and adverbs. I don’t do this because I frown upon big words or adjectives — while we should certainly use them with care, I use them myself, such as in this paragraph. I lay out these conditions because I want them to be mindful of the small details in the language they use.

Too often, we let the sentences tumble out of us and don’t take a close look at the many decisions that go into every single sentence. But we should. I contend that if you cannot write a good sentence, you cannot write a good essay. We have to work on the small things and get them right. Once there is enough mindful focus, we will internalise many good habits, the same way Virat Kohli no longer has to think of his footwork before playing a drive. The small things we focus on will change over time — but we should never lose that gaze.

I recorded an episode this Wednesday with the great economist Lant Pritchett. (It will be out a few weeks later.) Lant bemoans, as do I, the tendency of many modern economists to tackle small and easy problems rather than large and complex ones. They do this because they want to do work that is measurable, that will stand out in a CV, that will justify asking for funding from donors who want a concrete RoI. If you make a small contribution to a large problem, its impact may be far greater — but you can’t quantify it, so it is unsexy.

Think of pebbles in an avalanche, says Lant. You can’t attribute an avalanche to any single pebble — but they all matter, and they all change the landscape. There is great honour in being a pebble, or producing a pebble. The small things are the big thing.

I love this as a metaphor for everything I do in my life. Every day, I want to produce one pebble at a time and set it rolling. I will do it not because I want something big to happen at the end of it, but because each pebble is a thing of beauty. It wasn’t there before — and now it is.

It’s magic. Isn’t it.

Everything is Everything

Both Ajay Shah and I are great fans of Bruce Springsteen — the title of our YouTube show, Everything is Everything, comes from his great song, You’re Missing. We did an episode on Springsteen a few months ago, and you can watch it here.

Our last two episodes are embedded below. Please do like and subscribe!