small things make the BIG DIFFERENCE

It truly takes a celestial event of cosmic proportions to make us realize how small we really are. Every single interaction and emotion of our lives is dwarfed by the scale with which the Universe is used to dealing with. But that does not mean that we are unimportant, however little we may be, and our lives do play a huge rule in shaping the world(s) around us.

There is much to be said about small things. Large items - of high value - often come in small packages. It is the small things that are finally deemed important. We however try to deal with the BIG Difference that small things bring about.

The afore mentioned celestial event that was in the author's mind, was the recent Venus transit of the Sun. Venus - a planet nearly the size of the Earth - traces a path across the face of the sun, like an insect might on your windshield. A highly anticipated event, though visible from most of India, was something Bangaloreans could not witness because of the cover of clouds in the sky. The monsoon was at fault - the Late Monsoon. 

A delayed monsoon, resulting in untold misery to farmers, can be caused by minor variations in the weather. Which in turn are caused by minor variations in the atmosphere. Which again is an effect of our interactions with the atmosphere. Whether you believe in Global Warming or not, it is a bad idea to leave that incandescent bulb on all night. And if you did, the author blames YOU for Bangalore missing out on the last Venus transit of this century.

It is indeed very easy to construct such chains of events linked by causality, and more importantly on the small things that brought about such events. There is even a Science based on studying the effect of such tiny events - called Chaos Theory.

As appealing as the name is, it basically deals with chaos systems, which are systems (fancy scientific term for environment) where long term predictions are impossible. In a normal system, if you started with pushing your car, and continued pushing it, a scientist would be able to predict where the car was. However in a Chaos system, for example the Weather, it is not possible to predict and forecast it over a long period of time. In both the cases, there was a dependency on initial conditions (In the car pushing example - the road quality, the velocity of the car being pushed. Weather had initial conditions like temperature, humidity). However a slight change in these initial conditions bringing about a HUGE difference, and the sensitivity of these initial dependencies is the Butterfly Effect.

The Butterfly Effect phrase derives from the idea that tiny changes in the atmosphere due to the beat of a butterfly's wings, might bring about a great alteration in the path of a tornado thousands of miles away. Might accelerate it, even delay it, or entirely prevent it. The flapping of wings brings out a small change in the initial conditions of the atmosphere which over a long enough period, might make the weather diverge from what it originally would have done. The tornado that might have devastated Indonesia might never take place, or it might rain destruction on the coast next to the Bay of Bengal.

It sounds more like Science Fiction, where a tiny butterfly somewhere might affect the World in such a detrimental way. But it does teach us some things that we can apply closer to home.

The butterfly does not create the tornado, just affects it certain details and possibly the outcome. And it can have both a positive, and a negative effect. These are two important things that we need to keep in mind.

Consider a scenario were a person leaves the Server room door open, causing the Network Server to overheat and fail because the AC couldn't function. He will be fondly remembered by the college students who have their Computer Lab cancelled. But the same thing happening at a company can leave hundreds of stranded employees and customers.

A kidney stone of a 4 mm size can cause pain rivalling that of childbirth. A 0.00001% change in your genes can leave you immune to HIV. An exaggeration of 0.00001% (like the one by the author) can leave a stockbroker losing millions. Or he may be lucky, with that one small hunch he decided to act on and end up with billions (which unfortunately happens only in movies and Monopoly).

Just as the butterfly did not cause the tornado, success does not come without initial effort. You cannot build an entire political system, by just deciding who will be President. You need to lay groundwork, and place a strong foundation. And at each step, pay special attention to miniscule details, which leads to rich dividends.

The simplest way to look at these is to represent the two aspects with two small mundane, yet very essential objects. Linchpins and Keystones.

Linchpin

       

Keystone having a Lion's Head in an arch in Milan

                                                                  

Linchpins are fasteners used to prevent the wheel from sliding of the axle. They have come to be used metaphorically as something small that hold the various complicated components of a structure together. Mostly taken in a negative light, a failure of the linchpin can cause your wheel to come off the axle, and most definitely an accident. An economic linchpin can cause the collapse of an entire nation.

A Keystone on the other hand is a wedge-shaped stone piece placed at the apex of an vault or arch. It is the last stone to be placed, locking all other stones in place. Such a miniscule object allowing the arch to bear the entire weight. This is something we look at as a positive effect.

Both the Linchpin and the Keystone are relatively useless by their own rights, but nothing could be more important for the entire system to function, as a whole.

In a chaotic system, that of a company or an economy, it is necessary to identify both the Linchpins and the Keystones. Because in the end, it is these things that decide the outcome. Small things that make The Big Difference. But even if we forget all the larger aspects dealing with larger sections of the population - the weather, the economy, we will find that this Theory of the Small is applicable to individual lives as well. The ability to put in that last extra 10% in studying will not fail in helping a student succeed. That extra attention that a cook pays in preparing lunch might earn him a raise. The employee ready to put in an extra hours work will not go unnoticed. Because it is these things that separate us from the ordinary, propelling us to greater heights.

Analysing these tiny details in our lives, paying attention in dealing with them, and exerting that required extra effort, might be a secret to unlocking success.

In a world where the Creator might have decided to separate us from chimpanzees - genetically - by a meagre 2%, in this author's opinion, nothing can be more important than a smile on the lips (For more info on this, see Sampath Iyengar's picture at the bottom of the page). After all, it could be small thing to bring about the big change in this chaotic system called life.

                                                                                - Abhineet Deshpande