The domino effect: a short FAQ

Every time I write about focus, it comes back to one image: a domino. Here's the whole idea as a set of questions, because that's how people actually ask about it.

What's the domino effect?

You knock over one domino and it knocks over the next, which knocks over the one after that. The push you spend is tiny. The distance the chain travels is not. Small cause, large result.

A domino can only knock over one its own size, though.

No, and this is the part that surprised me. In 1983 a physicist named Lorne Whitehead showed that a domino can topple another about one and a half times its size. So if you line up a row where each piece is 50% bigger than the last, every small domino still hands off to a bigger one.

So how big does it get?

Big, fast. Start at two inches and grow each domino by half. By Keller's telling in the book, the 18th domino is as tall as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The 31st is taller than Everest. The 57th nearly reaches the moon. All of it set off by a push you could manage with one finger.

What does a physics demo have to do with my to-do list?

I used to treat progress like it needed a proportional shove: big result, big effort, so spread yourself across fifteen tasks and give each one a tap. Dominoes don't fall that way. They fall because someone lined them up and knocked over the first. The work is in the lining up and the first hit, not the shoving.

I have twenty priorities, not one.

You have twenty things you'd like done. One of them, done first, makes several of the others easier or pointless. That's your first domino. The other nineteen aren't equal; they just look equal sitting on a list.

Fine. I did my one thing today. Now what?

This is the part I missed for years. The domino effect doesn't only run inside a single chain, it runs across days. Today's one thing is domino #1. Because you did it, tomorrow's one thing is a little bigger and a little easier to reach. Do that, and the day after has a bigger domino still. One right thing, then the next, then the next: the same geometric math as the row above, played out on a calendar instead of a tabletop.

A single good day looks small. Thirty of them, each one setting up the next, is the 18th domino. You never feel the Tower of Pisa on a given morning. You feel one task that's slightly bigger than yesterday's. The size compounds while your attention stays on the next push.

Is this real, or just a tidy metaphor?

It's useful because it changes what you measure. Instead of “how much did I get through today,” the question becomes “did I knock over the one that sets up tomorrow.” Some days that takes twenty minutes. The compounding does the rest of the work.

Where do I start?

Tomorrow morning, before the list, ask one question: what's the one thing I can do today such that everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? Do that first, then do it again the next day. I wrote more about that question here.

Pick tomorrow's first domino tonight. Then keep knocking them over in order.