A man walked down the street and saw a crumpled-up piece of green paper. Excited at the prospect of finding a $100 bill, he eagerly picked it up and smoothed it out. Alas, it was but a humble $1 bill, so he crumpled it back up and threw it on the ground. He wanted a hundred dollars, not one!
He kept walking and soon found another crumpled bill, but again it turned out to be only a $1 bill so again he discarded it. The route he walked was littered with bills (maybe an armored car had overturned nearby or something?), but they were all ones, so they all got discarded.
This happened three or four hundred times before the man finally threw up his hands and declared “There are no hundred-dollar bills out here! Guess I’m just destined to be poor forever!”
This happens more often than you think. The small opportunities and wins you discard while you’re searching for the perfect solution can add up to what you want. Don’t discard a positive just because it’s smaller than what you want if it’s bigger than what you have.
The Opportunity Machine 