I suspect that many people think their life can change overnight. Hoping that some miracle will happen to them. This kind of thinking is called a “lottery mentality”.

People that buy lottery tickets aren’t willing to put in the hard work and earn their wealth, rather they think they can take a shortcut and eliminate all of their problems instantly with a bunch of cash, which is false.

According to the Atlantic: “People in the US spent more money playing the lottery in [2014] than on books, video games, and tickets for movies and sporting events combined.”

That translates to about $300 per adult a year, on average. But if you assume that only 25% of the US population gambles (80 million people), then the number jumps to $1,200 a year per adult.

Some may think this is a small figure initially, but consider this: The average American lives to 79 years of age. If you assume they start buying lottery tickets at 21, then they could be spending $1,200 a year for almost 60 years!

Over a 60 year period that translates to about $72,000 dollars.

But people are not patient. Why wait 60 years to make $72,000 when there’s a chance you could win $72,000 overnight?

The point is that although said losses may seem marginal in the short term, they are significant in the long term.

Another example is the impact our diet has on our overall health.

If you eat a bunch of candy bars in day you won’t become obese overnight. However, if you eat a bunch of candy bars every day and exceed your caloric intake then maybe you will break the scales, eventually.

You see it’s the accumulation of marginal changes that snowballs into something really positive, or negative.

The thing about marginal gains is that they’re not immediately noticeable, which tricks our body into thinking they’re having no effect at all.

In the case of candy bars, because you won’t notice any weight gains after eating a few of them in one day, you may think that you can continue doing so without putting on any weight.

However it’s quite the contrary, because over time these hard to notice weight gains will add up and accumulate into obesity. It won’t happen overnight, but it will certainly happen.

This is very true when it comes to improving your health or increasing your brainpower.

If you wake up feeling tired all the time, sorry but there’s no magic medication that you can pop to start sleeping better.

If you can’t stay concentrated while working or studying, sorry there’s no pill you can consume to get laser-focused immediately.

There are no shortcuts.

Achieving such outcomes will likely require significantly changing your habits and lifestyle, to fix underlying issues that have accumulated over a long period of time (aka an aggregation of marginal losses).

So whenever you want to achieve something BIG, stop looking for shortcuts and short-term solutions, and rather make positive marginal changes every single day without fail.

One day they will amount to something incredible.