Those butterfly wings must get tired -- initial conditions and small things matter

     Back in the Dark Ages (pre-WWW), in 1987, James Gleick had a book, Chaos: The Making of a New Science, published. In this book, he introduced people to something called "chaos theory". If you want to know specifically what that entails, you should read the book as I am not qualified to paraphrase it. However, one of the examples in the book (which became rather famous and also associated with various jokes) was that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in one remote region (let's say the Andes Mountains in Peru) may cause a thunderstorm somewhere else (maybe in Texas in the U.S) (that is NOT an exact quote).
     The conclusion that I drew from the book is that it is impossible to know, in advance, whether something is important or not, or how important it is, until much later. Also (similar to trying to pinpoint origination with "you gave me that cold"), it is realistically impossible to try to backtrace events to the beginning. You may trace results back to one event -- but that event has preceding things that led up to that event. At the beginning, it may depend on a butterfly's wings.
     How does that affect the way to approach life, or business? It appears to conflict with the other advice of "don't sweat the small stuff" -- but it actually just amplifies upon a recognition that you really don't know what is the "small stuff" in advance of the future. A few examples from various aspects of life.
     You are driving to work in a stream of vehicles. You allow someone to enter into the stream. That may prevent them from doing something dangerous later when they have reached their limit of patience. Or it may allow them to go through an intersection two minutes earlier and avoid an accident that takes place there. You cannot know in advance.
     Pay it forward. Behavior within a car is one extra level of separation -- but what about just a smile and a greeting when you see someone you know? Or holding the door open for a stranger (or someone you know) that has their hands full? Some little things can multiply as one person's smile carries through to a second smile and a third.
     A lot of small things can make one large thing. In business, creating a foundation that can survive changes and problems makes a huge difference. It is especially useful to allow for, and encourage, growth. If you succeed (which, of course, you hope you do) then retrofitting the needed base decisions and processes may hurt your results or even derail you. That foundation is composed of many "little" things -- vacation and benefit policies, ethics codes, decision processes, approval requirements, and so forth. At a size of 10 people, it is easy to just "wing it" but what happens if you grow to 100 people within a year? So busy and no time to hash out what should be happening.
     One small thing can create a movement. One photo of a plastic straw harming a sea turtle cascaded into an awareness of the specific results of our behaviors and a move to turn back to biodegradable straws and lending support to more general desire to stop littering and polluting.
     Small things can directly compound. Try saving your loose change each week and take it in to the bank at the end of the year. You will probably be very surprised at the total. Or, even more, set aside 5% of your salary each paycheck to put into some type of increasing account (money market, stock portfolio, 401(k), credit union savings) and see how it multiplies (at a greater or lesser rate depending on many different factors).
     I occasionally (maybe too often) play a game called spider solitaire. During the first hand, there are usually multiple possible sequences to start things off -- and it matters a lot to the outcome. If you get stuck at the end, you replay and change the starting sequence. Playing one game, I had to redo it five times before I came across the best starting sequence -- and it was NOT a sequence that played the most cards the first round. Sometimes delaying taking profits at the beginning help to maximize your final achievements.
     What is small to one person may be huge to another (or vice versa). This is another problem with categorizing things, in advance, as "big things" or "small stuff" -- there is no tool that "fits everyone".
     Multiples of small things make a huge impact. I used to watch a program called "Unwrapped" -- which presented videos on how food items were processed. It gave a glimpse of the huge extrapolation from the home kitchen to a food that is eaten by many across the country. About 15 million "Snickers" candy bars are made each day. Think about how many tons of chocolate, sugar, and other ingredients are needed each day. Then think about how much in a year. Even in our small choices, when it is multiplied by a substantial part of almost 8 billion people, the small things can make a huge impact.