The Power of Compound Effect
How to get success quickly?
We live in a fast world where everyone wants instant results. There are big claims to get fit, get younger, earn easy money with little effort. Claims that make you believe that you can be an overnight success. These have been marketed in the best way possible and are quite good to be true. Hacks about how to get the results as fast as you get your fast food or instant text messaging are widespread. Among the noise and bombardment of these messages, we have been distracted from the basics. If you are looking for quick fixes, gimmicks, or magic pills for success, sadly there aren’t any!
However, there’s one operating system that governs everything in our life:-The Compound Effect.
The Compound Effect
“Compounding is the Eighth Wonder of the world” — Albert Einstein
The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. In the very moment, these smart choices often don’t feel significant, but with time, the results are massive. The choices may seem small initially and that’s when it gets underrated. These small choices not only add up but start compounding eventually. The ideas of the article are inspired by Darren Hardy’s book, The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success.
Results from the compound effect can’t be achieved overnight, it takes time. It’s challenging to work consistently and efficiently for a long time and receive a massive payoff. In a world of instant gratification, that’s the reason why people can’t capitalize on this simple principle as it requires consistency and patience.
Imagine, you have two choices:- Take a rupee that doubles daily for a month or take 30 Crore (0.3 Billion) Rupees at the start of the month.
At first, it looks like a terrible idea to go with the first option as the amounts are nowhere close. By day 10, you will have only 1k Rupees and it might feel that you made a mistake to discard 30 Crore in the 2nd option. It’s only until day 29, you will not only break even but get ahead in the race. And on the 30th day, you would see that you made more than 100 Crores and put 70 Crores more in the pocket than if you opted for instant money.
Initially, it’s tempting to go for instant money as it provides “Instant Gratification”. The compounding clearly gives the payoffs that are delayed as well as massive. Small decisions shape destiny that would take anyone to the desired life or disaster by default.
Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Differences
Choices and Habits
“You make your choices and then your choices make you.” — Darren Hardy
Most of us sleepwalk through life. We aren’t aware of the choices that we make as they seem very insignificant at first but these small choices combined together, make our days. Those days become months, the months become years and ultimately years form the whole life. Eventually, the choices are the building blocks of life. The unhealthy habits are easy to do and provide Instant Gratification but have long term consequences.
Let’s take an example:- Suppose a person starts doing exercise regularly and stays consistent for a month. After 30 days, his sleep quality would definitely improve. Improved sleep quality implies the person would be more energetic and active during the daytime. With more energy, he would start working and if he works energetically, he would progress faster. With work satisfaction, there would be reduced work stress. The person would become happy, and this would start reflecting in his life, and other people would start liking him better because of his attitude, leading to healthy relationships. With time his improved performance at work would be noticed and incentivized by a hike.
Just imagine how powerful it is!!! What started as a habit of working out and sticking for just 30 days proves to improve each aspect of life with time and make his life an overall success. This is how the small choices and habits create a Ripple Effect and impact more aspects of his life.
Exercise -> Better Sleep -> More Energy -> Improved Work Performance -> Reduced Stress -> Happiness -> Healthy Relations -> Increased Income -> Success
Consistency and Momentum
99% of the successful and unsuccessful people have one thing in common, they both hate. Guess what? Doing the same thing for a long duration. Successful people do it anyway.
We all get started by a small step, taking one action at a time. Initially, the progress is slow and it might seem we are making no progress at all. Many people quit at this time as there is no visible improvement and our perceived sense of improvement is quite high than what actually happens. But if we stay consistent for some time and once habit starts to kick in, we will meet our friend. Who is this friend? It’s Momentum. Momentum lights all the gas cylinders at once and takes us faster towards our goals. Once momentum joins the party, it becomes very hard to stop it.
However, the momentum can be disrupted by only one thing. Lack of consistency!!! Nothing kills momentum faster than the lack of consistency. The tiny act of not being consistent will not only be an utter collapse of momentum but even the progress made would also suffer. Starting over again additionally brings stress and disappointment too.
How to Remain Consistent?
Now that we know how crucial consistency can be, let’s discover some tips and tricks that can help you stay on course and crush it:-
- Define your “Why?” :- Willpower is an important factor that can help in staying consistent. However, willpower alone won’t take you to the finishing line. Define the reasons why would you want to achieve that goal? Is the goal you are chasing worth it? Do you really want to do it or doing it under the external influence? A strong “Why” would help you to stay on track when you would want to quit.
- Start Tracking:- It’s good to track all the areas of your life that you want to improve. Tracking forces you to be more aware of the choices you make and you can clearly spot all the choices you make unconsciously. What gets measured, gets improved.
- Try to Do tasks at the same time every day:- If you can do it at the same time every day, you are reducing one decision to think about the time for performing a habit. Starting of the day or just before sleeping can be an ideal time because mostly you have control over that time.
- Think Big, Start Small:- Initial adrenaline can push people to start overdoing the endeavor. After some time, the excitement fades and there is no fuel left to continue. It’s best to take small baby steps at the beginning and then start to stretch and make better progress.
Conclusion
Small, smart choices that seem to take you ”Nowhere” can take you to achieve your goals. Be it anything, remember the compound action is always working. No matter how smart or talented your competition be, using the compound effect to your advantage will make you emerge a victor in the end.
The earlier you start, the sooner it will start compounding. What are you waiting for? Start leveraging the miracle of compound effect to jumpstart your life.
Slow and steady wins the race.
I appreciate if you made it this far. Thanks for Reading ❤ ❤ ❤!!
