Domino is a game where players place domino pieces on the edge of a base, then knock over as many as possible in a row. The last domino standing wins. Dominoes are small, square pieces of wood or plastic marked with an arrangement of spots or pips. They are usually stacked on top of one another with their identity-bearing side facing up, and the other blank or identically patterned. Each piece can be moved by pushing on it with a finger or tool. When a domino is knocked over, much of its potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, or the energy of motion, and some of that energy passes to the next piece. The process continues until all the dominoes are gone.

Hevesh, a domino artist who has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, creates mind-blowing domino setups for movies, TV shows, and events. She’s worked on projects that involve more than 300,000 dominoes. Her largest installations can take several nail-biting minutes to fall.

When she starts a new domino creation, Hevesh has some ideas in mind but allows the laws of physics to govern the rest. She may start with a particular color or pattern of dominoes, for example, and then work out how to fit them together in an efficient manner. Hevesh also considers the effect of friction, which slows down the speed at which a domino falls. She explains that the type of surface on which she sets her dominoes has a big impact on how quickly they fall. For example, she says that wooden dominoes set on a smooth floor will fall differently than plastic ones set on a rougher one.

If Hevesh starts with a two-inch tall domino, it will knock over the first one that is a foot and a half taller than it. That one will knock over the second, which in turn will knock over the third, and so on. If you continued this sequence, eventually the 18th domino would be about 164 feet tall, just shy of the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The same principle applies to our daily lives. It is not enough to simply wake up and go through the motions. Instead, we need to look for domino actions—small victories that lead to bigger and better things. Admiral William H. McRaven once said that the most important thing you can do in the morning is to make your bed. This is a simple act of discipline that can have massive payoffs.

Domino’s success demonstrates that it is possible to change a company’s course, even when it upends decades of tradition. In fact, the company’s turnaround started with a simple idea. Domino’s CEO David Doyle, who took the reins of the chain in 2010 after it was headed in a direction that didn’t meet its customers’ needs, focused on three goals.