Regular reader will know that I have been fiddling about with my ponds recently, and one project was to increase the flow of our waterfall, by installing a second pump.  This arrived yesterday, and I duly installed it.  Imagine my surprise when I woke this morning to find we had lost hundreds of gallons of water over night.  Apparently not all the water was falling back into the pond and the accumulation of all these ‘spilt’ drops was a a 6” drop in level! 

I think there is a parallel both in our personal and business lives.  When our enthusiasm drops or morale falls, initially you can’t see any difference, but over time, it becomes very apparent.  It is strange how a series of seemingly tiny events can have such a profound impact.  I was lucky, as I had quite long time between my before and after pictures.  If you don’t have such a clear ‘picture’ that things have changed for the worse, but none-the-less feel that things are not as they should be, assume that you are right and look for your ‘leak’.  We are much better at spotting this kind of tiny change using our intuition rather than our brains.

I’d be interested in any examples you have of this kind micro-change and how you spotted it and what you did.

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”   Warren Buffett