Every morning, I write a 3-line diary. The first line is about the worst thing happened on the previous day while the second line is about the most enjoyable and happiest moment. The last line concludes the day's diary with the resolution for the day. It takes only 5 minutes maximum and even 1 minute when I am busy, so it is not such a burden. One day, after using 6-7 notebooks for 5 years, I decided to organize the diaries I had written under the three themes in an excel file. Then, two things became clear to me. I could distinguish things that gave me energy from things that took my energy. I made efforts to repeat the things that gave me energy more often and longer. That started to change my life little by little. I named them 'small steps' and began to practice them every day. It was a short list at first, but it began to grow. I organized the list into an excel file and made a 'small step planner'. Of course, I am still practicing them now.

 The first small step is of course the three-line diary. The next includes reading one page of the Bible and memorizing five English vocabularies. There is an app serviced by a web portal that offers five selected vocabularies, pronunciations and even a simple quiz to check if I have learnt them. After 3 years of practicing these small habits, I got slowly more ambitious. From six months ago, I began memorizing Japanese vocabularies and three months ago, after a business trip to China, I started to memorize five Chinese vocabularies every day. For Korean spelling, I started to study 10 words every day with English using the app. As a result, I can now understand most colloquial English without translation. Feeling encouraged, I started to watch TED videos without subtitles and even watched a whole movie without subtitles. More than anything, the gradual improvement in English boosted my confidence and self-esteem. I began to enjoy learning English on my own.

 My small steps did not stop here. Every morning when I wake up, I make my bed as a new habit. Also, I began to take a selfie a day. Ever since I started to record changes on my face, I began to care about my facial expressions. Sometimes I make the happiest face but I look emotionless in the picture, which makes me perplexed. It was the moment I experienced the benefits of seeing myself from an objective perspective. I now have more than ten podcasts that I listen to every day repeatedly and I clip and keep the news articles I am interested in. Once the list grew to include over tens of thousands news articles, my writing became significantly more efficient. It was as if I had my own writing storage, which was one of many skills valued by numerous great writers. I began to transcribe writings of famous columnists from Korea and abroad every day. So far, I have transcribed around 400 columns. Another small step I have set is to arrive 10 minutes before a designated meeting time. Now, I am late at meetings or gatherings much less frequently. I got more and more into these small steps. It gave me both fun and rewarding feeling.

 I began to upload all of these details on a blog service named Brunch. The posts have been viewed by around 130,000 people and thousands of them even shared my posts. Soon, a publishing company contacted me to turn my posts into a book. I ended up publishing a book in the end and it is still selling well. I also got so many requests for lecturing. Through all of this, I met experts in various fields that I would normally not be able to meet. Some of those meetings would actually lead to work. I was glad that the income from lecturing became higher than royalties from my book, but the process of that connected me with more opportunities and people, which was almost magical to me. I started to practice small steps harder just so that I could be responsible for what I had written. Still, my small steps are on trivial thing. For instance, to change my shy personality, I added a small step of saying hello to bus drivers. For health, I added a small step of drinking five cups of water a day. Helping household chores is a small step that has me earned a score from my wife. However, the result of repeating these very small and trivial things was incredible. The changes were felt more by others than me. Healthy energies began to flow around me.

 Some people may wonder if small steps were the result of 'obsession' as many people have asked me. To those people, I show a small step planner that I use to document my practice every day. Out of 30 small steps on the list, a bit more than a half are the steps I practice every day because I am not holding onto them like an obsession. If I do not practice something on the list for a week, I would just delete it. It is because my small steps are not the tools to achieve a goal as they say in self-help books. Most of the things on the list do not exceed 5 to 10 minutes to practice. I thought that anything that would disturb a daily life would not be a small step. The small steps that I repeat every day are the things that are fun and beneficial and the things that have become a habit without me even realizing it. Consequently, I do not feel stressed out to practice them. Rather, they help me greatly to maintain a balance in life.

 I did not create small steps. The phrase, 'small step', is from a book titled 'One small step can change your life'. Robert Maurer, the author of the book and a professor at UCLA School of Medicine, introduced an anecdote when he made a suggestion to a highly obese patient for treatment. Exercising was important to the patient, but, knowing that the patient would not be able to do it, the author proposed that the patient should walk in front of TV every day for one minute instead of a grandiose exercise plan. After a month, when the patient revisited the hospital, the weight of the patient was almost the same. But, there was one amazing change. The patient asked the doctor.

 “Sir, are there other things I could do for one minute a day?"

 That was the moment a real change began. A small and trivial habit can trick the brain of a person who does not like changes. People's brains are instinctively resistant to changes. This is the major reason why people make a resolution and fail after three days. However, a small change called small step, is not recognized by brain. And this small change can lead to an ambition for a bigger change. As this ambition piles up, it can produce an amazing result. When we apply small steps to corporate management, it will be Lean's business model, Design Thinking methodology that focuses on users and Agile's methodology in software development. After experimenting small changes, you can move on to a bigger change and innovation. These changes are not unnatural. It also eliminates resistance to a sudden change. The changes that happen without ourselves realizing them could naturally lead to bigger changes. People who can change themselves can change an organization, a company and a market.

 Small step is a way of fusing a very small and trivial habits into daily lives. However, the result is never small. It changes not only yourself but people around you. Because of this, I wake up 5am every day and start a day with my 3-line diary. I make my bed and read a page of the Bible. I memorize five English vocabularies and five Japanese and Chinese vocabularies and take a selfie. It is because I believe these small changes will change me. I am certain it will give me the strength to live the day. And it is because the process is joyful as much as it is beneficial.