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The Domino Effect: Quotes, Quips, and Common Sense Strategies for Business & Life

The Domino Effect: Quotes, Quips, and Common Sense Strategies for Business & Life

You encounter it every day. People don’t understand your desire to be a perfectionist or a person known for extreme excellence in your chosen career or life goals. People question why you spend so much time focused on reaching specific plateaus and every single detail associated with completing your goals. Some may simply call it planning, anal retentiveness, being overly organized, but it’s more than that. It’s about control, direction, micro-managing one’s self, double dotting the 'i’s' and double crossing the 't’s'.

Many times while growing up, your parents or teachers may have told you, 'The more you study today, the more successful you’ll be tomorrow'. 'The harder you try, the better you’ll be'. 'No pain, no gain'. Sports teams rarely go to compete without some idea as to the plays they’d like to run, or the specific ways they want to approach the contest.

There are a million ways to say the same thing. But it’s hard for high school or college students, newly arrived professionals, or those without the passion for excellence to appreciate these messages. It’s about understanding, appreciating and implementing the domino effect.
The Domino Effect is a structured, strategic, organized method to gain control of 'out of control' or future issues, tasks, or projects. The basic concept is lining up dominoes or planned activities strategically placed to accomplish your goals. The Domino Effect is not 'fortune' telling, it’s 'future' telling, it’s not about reading 'palms', it’s about reading and writing 'plans', and it’s not allowing others to suggest your future, it’s you taking control of your own future. It’s about setting up a plan, and more importantly action steps (dominoes) to accomplish your plan.

Those who don’t get the domino effect are those with excuses for everything, things are rarely ever right, and few things work in their favor. They have all of the wrong answers to the right questions, or ask the wrong questions at the right time. Some might say, 'They sleep in the bed they make', or 'it’s their own fault'. They allow minor distractions to take over their time and the focus. Procrastinators either understand this and don’t care, or haven’t come to realize the domino effect. Their lives are filled with stress, uncertainty, and constant struggle. Other people and situations control them instead of them leading other people and situations.

Some say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing the same way day after day and expect different results. This book offers ideas on how to do things differently day after day expecting different results, better results. If you’re not making the progress you expect, it may be that your goals are not clearly defined, or it may be that you don’t have a plan to reach your goals at all! You are saying it to yourself right now, people don’t plan to fail, the fail to plan.
This book is all about the domino effect, and how you can learn new habits, strengthen the habits you have, or help others develop habits. Shared are personal experiences, various quotes, and scenarios to offer examples and support as you travel down the road. There is also a planning sheet included to help grow your domino strength. A lot of information can be found on our web site too, www.dominoeffectonline.com.

This is written so that professional dominoes and personal dominoes are intermixed, because, after all, they are in most people’s lives anyway. And it’s not a 50/50 mix; it’s 70%-75% professional: 25%-30% personal, which is how most working individuals divide their “awake” energy.

I’ve purposely kept this simple. You’ll find no clinical studies or psycho mumbo jumbo. I hope you’ll find this book easy to read, simple to understand, and practical and logical in nature.