By a show of hands.

How many of you believe you could replicate this image of Brad Pitt

with just a pencil and piece of paper?

Well, I'm going to show you how to do this.

And in so doing,

I'm going to give you the skill necessary

to become a world-class artist.

And it shouldn't take more than about 15 seconds.

But before I do that,

how many of you believe you could replicate this image

of a solid gray square?

(Laughter)

Every one of us.

And if you can make one gray square,

you can make two, three, nine ...

Truth of the matter is,

if you could made just one gray square,

it'd be very difficult to argue

that you couldn't make every gray square necessary

to replicate the image in its entirety.

And there you have it.

I've just given you the skills necessary to become a world-class artist.

(Laughter)

I know what you're thinking.

"That's not real art,

certainly wouldn't make me a world-class artist."

So let me introduce you to Chuck Close.

He's one of the highest-earning artists in the entire world, for decades,

he creates his art using this exact technique.

You see, what stands between us

and achieving even our most ambitious dreams

has far less to do with possessing some magical skill or talent,

and far more to do with how we approach problems

and make decisions to solve them.

And because of the continuous and compounding nature

of all those millions of decisions

that we face on a regular basis,

even a marginal improvement in our process

can have a huge impact on our end results.

And I'll prove this to you

by taking a look at the career of Novak Djokovic.

Back in 2004,

when he first became a professional tennis player,

he was ranked 680th in the world.

It wasn't until the end of his third year

that he jumped up to be ranked third in the world.

He went from making 250,000 a year to 5 million a year,

in prize money alone,

and of course, he did this by winning more matches.

In 2011, he became the number one ranked men's tennis player in the world,

started earning an average of 14 million a year in prize money alone

and winning a dominating 90% of his matches.

Now, here's what's really interesting

about all of these very impressive statistics.

Novak doesn't control any of them.

What he does control are all the tiny little decisions

that he needs to make correctly along the way

in order to move the probability

in favor of him achieving these types of results.

And we can quantify and track his progress in this area

by taking a look at the percentage of points that he wins.

Because in tennis

the typical point involves one to maybe three decisions,

I like to refer to this as his decision success rate.

So, back when he was winning about 49% of the matches he was playing,

he was winning about 49% of the points he played.

Then to jump up, become number three in the world,

and actually earn five million dollars a year

for swinging a racquet,

he had to improve his decision success rate

to just 52 percent.

Then to become not just number one

but maybe one of the greatest players to ever play the game,

he had to improve his decision success rate

to just 55 percent.

And I keep using this word "just."

I don't want to imply this is easy to do,

clearly, it's not.

But the type of marginal improvements that I'm talking about

are easily achievable by every single one of us in this room.

And I'll show you what I mean.

From kindergarten, all the way through to my high school graduation -

yes, that's high school graduation for me -

(Laughter)

every one of my report cards basically said the same thing:

Steven is a very bright young boy,

if only he would just settle down and focus.

What they didn't realize was I wanted that

even more than they wanted it for me,

I just couldn't.

And so, from kindergarten straight through the 2nd year of college,

I was a really consistent C, C- student.

But then going into my junior year,

I'd had enough.

I thought I want to make a change.

I'm going to make a marginal adjustment,

and I'm going to stop being a spectator of my decision-making

and start becoming an active participant.

And so, that year,

instead of pretending, again,

that I would suddenly be able to settle down and focus on things

for more than five or ten minutes at a time,

I decided to assume I wouldn't.

And so, if I wanted to achieve the type of outcome that I desire -

doing well in school -

I was going to actually have to change my approach.

And so I made a marginal adjustment.

If I would get an assignment, let's say, read five chapters in a book,

I wouldn't think of it as five chapters,

I wouldn't even think of it as one chapter.

I would break it down into these tasks that I could achieve,

that would require me to focus for just five or ten minutes at a time.

So, maybe three or four paragraphs.

That's it.

I would do that and when I was done with those five or ten minutes,

I would get up.

I'd go shoot some hoops, do a little drawing,

maybe play video games for a few minutes,

and then I come back.

Not necessarily to the same assignment,

not even necessarily to the same subject,

but just to another task that required just five to ten minutes of my attention.

From that point forward,

all the way through to graduation,

I was a straight-A student, Dean's List,

President's Honor Roll, every semester.

I then went on to one of the top graduate programs in the world

for finance and economics.

Same approach, same results.

So then, I graduate.

I start my career and I'm thinking,

this worked really well for me.

You know, you take these big concepts,

these complex ideas, these big assignments,

you break them down too much more manageable tasks,

and then along the way,

you make a marginal improvement to the process

that ups the odds of success in your favor.

I'm going to try and do this in my career.

So I did.

I started out as an exotic derivatives trader for credit Swiss.

It then led me to be global head of currency option trading

for Bank of America,

global head of emerging markets for AIG international.

It helped me deliver top-tier returns

as a global macro hedge fund manager for 12 years

and to become founder and CIO of two award-winning hedge funds.

So it gets to 2001,

and I'm thinking, this whole idea,

it worked really well in school,

it's been serving me well as a professional,

why aren't I applying this in my personal life,

like to all those big ambitious goals I have for myself?

So one day, I'm walking to work,

and at the time my commute

was a walk from one end of Hyde Park to the other, in London.

It took me about 45 minutes each way,

an hour and a half a day, seven and a half hours a week,

30 hours a month, 360 hours a year,

when I was awake, aware, basically wasting time,

listening to music on my iPod.

So on my way home from work that day I stopped at the store.

I picked up the first 33 CDs in the Pimsleur German language program,

ripped them and put them onto my iPod.

But I didn't stop there.

Because the truth of the matter is, I'm an undisciplined person.

And I knew that at some point,

I'd switch away from the language and go back to the music.

So I removed that temptation by removing all of the music.

That left me with just one option:

listen to the language tapes.

So ten months later, I'd listened to all 99 CDs

in the German language program,

listened to each one three times each.

And I went to Berlin for a 16-day intensive German course.

When I was done, I invited my wife and kids to meet me.

We walked around the city.

I spoke German to the Germans, they spoke German back to me.

My kids were amazed.

(Laughter)

I mean they couldn't close their jaws.

But you and I, we know,

there is actually nothing amazing about what I've just done.

I made this marginal adjustment to my daily routine.

This marginal adjustment to my process.

(German) Und jetzt, ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.

And now I could speak some German.

And so in that moment, I'm thinking,

it's not supposed to be this easy for a guy like me - an old guy -

to learn a new language.

You're supposed to do that when you're a kid.

And yet here I had done it.

This marginal adjustment.

So what other big ambitious goals I've been holding onto,

putting off until retirement,

that I could potentially achieve

if I just made a marginal adjustment to my routine?

So I started doing them.

I earned my auto racing license.

I learned how to fly a helicopter,

did rock-climbing, skydiving.

I learned how to fly planes aerobatically.

Well, if you're like me, back in 2007,

you might have the same goal I had.

I was just moving back from London.

I was about 25 pounds overweight and out of shape,

and I wanted to rectify that.

So I could go to the typical route,

you know, I could write a check to a gym I'd never go to.

Or I could swear to myself that I will never again

eat those foods that I love

but are doing all the damage.

And I knew that going that route rarely results in the outcome you desire.

So I decided to become an active participant.

I thought about the habits and passions that I've developed in my life,

and I thought, can I make just a marginal adjustment to them

so that they work in my favor as opposed to against me?

And so I did.

I've got a habit

where I've been walking an hour and a half a day for the last seven years,

and I've got this passion for being in the outdoors.

And so that year,

I didn't actually set the new year's resolution to lose 25 pounds.

I set a resolution to hike all 33 trails

in the front country of Santa Barbara Mountains.

And I'd never been on a hike before in my life.

(Laughter)

But the truth of the matter is, it's not about the 33 trails.

You have to break this big ambitious goal

down into these more manageable decisions -

the types of decisions that need to be made correctly along the way

in order to improve the odds of achieving the type of outcome you desire.

It's not about even one trail.

It's about those tiny little decisions,

you know, like when you are sitting at your desk,

putting in just a little extra time at the end of a day.

Or you're lying on your couch,

clicking through the channels on your remote control,

or scrolling through your Facebook feed,

and in that moment, make the decision to put it down.

You go put on your hiking clothes,

you go walk outside your front door, and you shut it behind you.