The Butterfly Effect

In science fiction there’s a popular time traveling phenomena called the butterfly effect. The idea behind it is time travelers needing to be extremely cautious as the killing of even a single butterfly in the past can have dramatic consequences on the present.

Killing a butterfly may prevent it from pollinating a plant, which may cause the plant to die and another animal to starve to death because of it. As a result of that animal dying, perhaps more spiders are able to survive, which then has a devastating impact on the number of insects in the area potentially screwing up the whole ecosystem.

Any hypothetical situation you could come up with would appear to be irrelevant as time travel is impossible. And that’s correct to some degree. But just as today’s past is yesterday’s present, the same can be said of today’s present being tomorrow’s past.

Any small change you make today can have a dramatic impact on your life tomorrow. If you eat stir-fried vegetables for dinner tonight rather than gorging on cookies, your body’s going to have an easier time digesting the food and as a result you’ll sleep better.

In the morning this could end up being the difference between getting up right away and hitting the snooze button. More importantly, waking up on time lends you the ability to go on a twenty minute run before work, which energizes you and leads you to being more productive through out the day.

Productive workers aren’t disciplined so today you don’t have to worry about Mr. Boss messing with your stress levels. And because you’re relaxed today you’re able to treat your spouse better and they end up rewarding you with… Well, you get the point. And this is only going one day deep. Many of these positive effects are bound to carry over to the next day and so forth as well.

Every little thing you do today has a huge run off effect on the life you lead tomorrow. Don’t look at only the immediate impact of the things you do. Even if killing a butterfly today seems irrelevant doing so has the potential to completely change the way tomorrow plays out.

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