Sam is the most British (and perhaps the smartest) person I know, and this advice came straight from him, so the title feels fitting.

One day, I told him I’d made a terrible decision - one that felt irreversible. His reply?

“You don’t save £1000 in four big goes; you do it a pound at a time.”

What he meant was that no single decision defines your life. The small choices we make each day compound, shaping us far more than any one dramatic moment.

It made me realise how often I treat life like it hinges on a few milestones, when in reality it’s built out of the quiet in-betweens. If you’ve really stumbled, you won’t rebuild everything in a sweeping gesture; you’ll do it gradually, step by step. A pound a day. A little better each time.

You see it everywhere. Consistency outlasts intensity. You don’t prepare for a marathon by cramming in five half-marathons the week before; you train in steady kilometres until it becomes part of who you are. And the same goes for dating: a quick haircut before the big night matters less than the long-term effort of becoming someone interesting, healthy, and confident.

In the end, real change never arrives in a single moment. It gathers quietly, in layers, pound by pound, choice by choice.

PS: As I was writing this, Sam texted me the following:

Sam’s text

Again, excellent advice, albeit a bit more cliché this time.