Compound Effect

The choices that seem insignificant today are building the life you will experience tomorrow.

It was Wednesday at two o’clock. I had time before my next meeting, and I was already a couple of episodes ahead. I could have done something else.

Instead, I sat down to record a podcast.

There would be no applause when I finished. No one would immediately thank me. In that moment, recording another episode could seem insignificant.

But that is how I built the podcast. I showed up every week. Those individual decisions became a body of work, an audience, and a business.

That is the compound effect: little decisions adding up to something much bigger than any one of them.

Stop waiting for the big win

We love the idea of getting discovered. The book deal, the lottery, the one big opportunity that changes everything.

But the way we create an effect in our lives is often much less dramatic. We show up on a Wednesday afternoon and get to work.

When I started the podcast, there were not many people listening. If I had skipped an episode, most people would not have noticed. There was no expectation yet.

I earned that expectation through consistency. Recording episode 14 or 32 or 112 did not feel like a huge decision. Each was something I could have chosen not to do.

Together, those choices created something I could not have created in one afternoon.

The big wins are made of little wins. The big quits are made of little quits. We are always creating an effect, even when we dismiss today's choice as too small to matter.

Look at one day, then multiply it

I want you to take a snapshot of your day. What did you do? What did you put into your mind? What did you spend your time thinking about?

For something you do every day, multiply it by 365.

Five minutes on Twitter may not seem like much. Neither does scrolling through Instagram or checking Facebook. But what is the amount of time over a year? What is the amount of your brain's energy?

Now consider writing one page of a book every day. At the end of a year, you would have 365 pages.

People tell me they do not have time to write a book. Do they have time to write one page? That question gives them a different way to look at the project.

The same is true of cleaning your house. A little cleaning has an effect. Never cleaning has an effect too.

Ask what your current daily choices will produce if you keep repeating them.

Your mind is experiencing a compound effect too

For a while, I had news notifications on my phone. Reading each one seemed like a small thing. But I noticed how much time my brain spent processing and thinking about what I had read.

The news was filling my mind with the unusual, scary things happening in the world. Those small drops of negativity added up. I started to feel the effect.

When I turned the notifications off, my experience changed.

I want to fill my brain with ideas, tools, studies, and approaches. I do that a little at a time, and then I think about what I am learning.

My body of knowledge did not come from one enormous period of study. It came from what I chose to put into my mind day after day.

Be conscious of what you are feeding your brain. Something does not become insignificant just because you only do it for a few minutes at a time.

Practice builds the skill

I coach myself every day. A little bit, every day.

That is part of why I can coach quickly and skillfully. I can see the difference in students who consistently coach themselves. The skill becomes sharp through practice.

A friend wanted to learn a headstand in yoga. She decided she would try every day for a year. She was willing to practice something she did not yet know how to do. By the end, she could do it.

I experienced this with yoga too. During a year when I practiced every day, my body changed and my experience of yoga changed. I could do things that had once been difficult.

Then my teachers moved studios. I practiced less. Later, I stopped practicing regularly for a while.

When I returned, I was stiff and less strong. I wanted the instructor to know I knew how to do the poses. But knowing I had done them before did not give me the current effect of regular practice.

I was experiencing the compound effect of my recent choices.

Love the process long enough to stay

Starting again can be uncomfortable. You are sore. You cannot do what you used to do. You have to take a break in a pose that once seemed easy.

It is tempting to quit when the effort has not yet produced a result you can see.

That is why I have to learn to love the process. I cannot hold out on willpower alone while waiting for a distant reward.

Instant gratification takes so much of our attention. Our brains keep seeking that immediate reward. But choosing the immediate reward over and over has its own compound effect.

I did not stop drinking solely for the way my face might look years later. I had to enjoy the process of not drinking. Later, when I looked back at old videos, I could see a difference that had not been obvious early on.

The result had continued to compound.

The reward can become bigger than the effort

The compound effect is not always a neat, even increase. Sometimes there is a tipping point.

I can count the hours I spent creating podcast episodes. But I cannot reduce the effect of that work to a simple payment for each hour. The audience, the business, and the people helped by the whole body of work are much bigger than that.

As you build a skill, the result itself can help produce more results. Strength makes the next yoga class easier. Your previous practice supports your next practice.

Every effect in our lives starts with a thought. The Model we choose today produces the feelings, actions, and results we experience. Repeating those choices becomes our life.

So if you are working without applause, you have to care enough to keep showing up. Notice the small choices you are making. Notice the ones you are avoiding because they do not seem to matter today.

Can you do something today that will matter through repetition?

Success is built in those daily choices. Choose the process you want to keep practicing, and give it time to compound.