Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Much like money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. While they may seem insignificant on a daily basis, their cumulative impact over months and years can be substantial. It's often only when reflecting back two, five, or even ten years later that the worth of good habits and the detriment of bad ones become starkly evident.
WE CONVINCE OURSELVES THAT MASSIVE SUCCESS COMES FROM MASSIVE ACTION
It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.
- Whether it is losing weight
- Building a business
- Writing a book
- Winning a championship
- Or achieving any other goal
These results occur due to the thousands of repetitions that precede the significant moment.
This can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life. We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment.
- If you save a little money now, you’re still not a millionaire.
- If you go to the gym three days in a row, you’re still out of shape.
- If you study Mandarin for an hour tonight, you still haven’t learned the language.
We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines.
Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide.
- If you eat an unhealthy meal today, the scale doesn’t move much.
- If you work late tonight and ignore your family, they will forgive you.
- If you procrastinate and put your project off until tomorrow, there will usually be time to finish it later.
A single decision is easy to dismiss.
When we continuously make 1 percent errors, replicate poor decisions, duplicate minor mistakes, and rationalize small excuses, our seemingly insignificant choices can accumulate into detrimental outcomes. It's the build-up of numerous minor missteps, a 1 percent decline at a time, that ultimately leads to a significant problem.
YOU GET WHAT YOU REPEAT
Regardless of your current success or lack thereof, what's important is whether your habits are leading you towards success. Your current trajectory should concern you more than your current results.
Your outcomes are a delayed reflection of your habits. Your habits essentially determine your trajectory.
- Your net worth reflects your financial habits.
- Your weight indicates your eating habits.
- Your knowledge mirrors your learning habits.
- Your clutter signifies your cleaning habits.
You get what you repeat.
If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the trajectory of your habits, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line.
TIME MAGNIFIES THE MARGIN BETWEEN SUCCESS AND FAILURE
- Good habits make time your ally.
- Bad habits make time your enemy.
The habits that you cultivate in your life play a significant role in determining your future, as they can either compound in your favor or against you. They could lead you down a path of success and prosperity or towards failure and regret. It's essential to understand that these daily actions, routines, or behaviors, however insignificant they may appear on the surface, can aggregate over time and have a profound impact on your life. Therefore, it's crucial to develop positive and productive habits that will compound for your benefit and aid in your personal and professional growth.
POSITIVE COMPOUNDING
- Productivity compounds
- Accomplishing one extra task is a small feat on any given day, but it counts for a lot over an entire career. The effect of automating an old task or mastering a new skill can be even greater. The more tasks you can handle without thinking, the more your brain is free to focus on other areas.
- Knowledge compounds
- Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative. Furthermore, each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas. As Warren Buffett says, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”
- Relationships compound
- People reflect your behavior back to you. The more you help others, the more others want to help you. Being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.
NEGATIVE COMPOUNDING
- Stress compounds
- The frustration of a traffic jam. The weight of parenting responsibilities. The worry of making ends meet. The strain of slightly high blood pressure. By themselves, these common causes of stress are manageable. But when they persist for years, little stresses compound into serious health issues.
- Negative thoughts compound
- The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.
- Outrage compounds
- Riots, protests, and mass movements are rarely the result of a single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.
more tomorrow,
Hunter
P.S. Most of this content is derived from James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. I'm currently delving deep into the topic of habit formation. Perhaps you can learn alongside me.