In 1923, Walt Disney’s first studio went bankrupt. Its cartoons were ridiculously expensive and lost a fortune. While Steamboat Willie made Disney a credible animator, business success was an entirely different story.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs changed everything.

The $8 million it earned in its first six months of 1938 was the most a film ever made in that time. Walt Disney Studios was transformed. All debts were paid off. Employees got retention bonuses. The company purchased a state-of-the-art studio in Burbank, where it remains today.

An Oscar turned Walt from an established animator to an overnight celebrity. By 1938, he had produced several hundreds of hours of film. But business wise, the 83 minutes of Snow White were all that mattered.

Everyone understands 80/20 rule: that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the causes. The law of the vital few. In Walt Disney’s case, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was more like 99/1. This one outlier transformed his life.

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One of my favourite pastimes is experimenting with habits. Once, I meditated every day for two months straight. Another time, I woke up at 6:30am for a whole semester. Right now, I’m trying to read 30 minutes before I go to bed.

Yet, the vast majority of these habits don’t last. Some of them I can’t control, like injury preventing me from running. Others, like meditating or waking early, I just fell out of since it wasn’t worth it anymore.

Only two habits have stuck with me: reading and writing. And these two outliers have easily shaped over 90% of the person I am today.

Furthermore, I can count on two hands the books that have shaped me the most. In my journaling, a select few entries contain the most powerful lessons. On this site, a handful of posts drive the majority of views: Agnosthesia: The Curse of Uncertainty, Monologue of an Introvert and Minimum Viable Happiness amongst others. Ironically, the posts I expected to do the best got no attention at all. But that’s a story for another time.

One lesson from all this is to wildly experiment. Walt Disney would have never created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs if he didn’t move out from cartoon shorts to a full-length cartoon. Similarly, I would’ve never gotten into reading if I maintained my pessimism towards literature from high school.

If you’re looking for practices that will change your life, throw as much as you can against a wall and see what sticks. Only God knows what outliers lie in store.

Credits to The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness for the above story – an amazing book, deserving of its title (and thank you Lynn for the recommendation).