Butterfly Effect
The idea that a very small action can eventually lead to a significant difference to a system — such as a butterfly flapping its wings which eventually accumulates weeks later into a hurricane.
Published June 20, 2018
Origin
Meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered the phenomenon in 1961 at MIT when he found that rounding a variable in his weather model from six decimal places to three produced a wildly different forecast. He presented the idea in a 1972 talk titled "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" — giving the concept its iconic name and helping establish chaos theory as a field.
Everyday Use
This can be as true day-to-day as it is for destiny-altering hurricanes. The simple act of not hitting the snooze button, or of expressing gratitude in the morning, or sticking to that habit for just one more day — these can be all that was needed to nudge the chaos of everyday life into a particular direction, for good or for ill.