The Powerful Trick You Didn’t Know About the Domino Effect

We’ve all heard about the domino effect and how getting into the momentum of this chain reaction can make it easier to achieve future goals.

For a refresher, Wikipedia describes the domino effect as “the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of similar events”.

In other words, once we get in momentum, subsequent tasks become a lot easier to execute.

But what you may not know about the domino effect is that one domino is capable of knocking over more than just it’s own size or weight in a subsequent domino.

How much more?

Try 50% more or 1.5x its own size.

Let’s put that into context.

If you were to line up a series of 13 dominoes, each one 1.5x larger than the one before it, and the first domino was only 5 millimeters high and 1 millimeter thick (so small you need tweezers to put it into place), how big do you think the 13th domino would be?

Answer?

3 feet tall and 100 pounds!

That’s 2 BILLION times more energy between the last two dominoes than the first two.

But get this: If you lined up 29 dominoes instead of 13, the last domino would be as tall as the Empire State Building!

Check out this short video demonstrating the experiment.

The lesson here? We don’t need to go big when it comes to starting a new habit or setting a new goal. Rather, we should dream bigger and take smaller actions, knowing that each small win’s momentum sets us up to achieve something much greater on our next step.

So here’s your game plan:

Get clear on your big vision.

Line up your most important tasks.

Start with the SMALLEST one.

Knock it over.

Repeat.