Compound, Compound and then some more
The title gives it away but this post isn’t about compounding money or investing.
Compounding is a very powerful concept, easier to understand with a money example. $1 on day 1st of July, doubling it every day of the month vs $100 million - if given an option, one should chose the former. That $1 a day doubling for just one month is $1billion+.
This is easy to understand, but I find compounding has an incredibly profound impact on two other aspects of your life.
What you choose to do
You should make a career choice that you can pursue for decades. True success only comes after 10-20 years of practicing one’s craft daily. The people who are able to do this eventually have a better chance to get ahead.
The examples we see of 20 year olds succeeding - whether it be acting, modeling or athletics or even business - these young prodigies just figured out something they loved early on and started putting effort from a very young age. In fact, this insight was behind my first company Letsintern - and its vision “Start Young”. Steve jobs did his first job at 12, Bill gates coded since 13 and MJ was on stage since 6.
Therefore if you chose a career that is just a fad, that you truly cannot dedicate decades to - it is likely you will fail. This means you have to chose broadly - chose industries not roles, chose themes not specifics, chose athletics not a distance, and so on.
It also means you have to first spend time clearly thinking what fulfills you and then work backwards from there to achievement goals.
How to find what fulfills you? To me, the answer is simple - analyze your free time and see with no pressure what productive activity do you submerge yourself in. Or vice versa ask yourself, if you had all the money in the world - what would you want to do with your money and time. And if your answer borders to anything which is close to “nothing” - this post isn’t for you. Go see memes on the internet.
Who you choose to do it with
Nothing impacts your life more than the people you chose to spend time with. Make this decision very wisely, cut people who have no passion for growth or adventure. Nothing is going to have a more outsized impact on your life, than the people who surround you. This is often under-estimated.
Also, people are prone to make two classic mistakes with respect to people. One, choosing people in their inner circle based on their intercept (where they are) versus their slope (where they are going and how fast).
Two, relationships are built on genuine warm connections - through repeatedly spending time with the same people. Making memories. Being through highs and lows. Supporting each other. Laughing. Doing stupid things. Being vulnerable. Business and life happens somewhere in between, and most people are too busy building a big network and miss out on deep meaningful relationships.
Two things that make compounding a very difficult concept
In the $1 example stated above, for the first 26 days - the $1 doubling every day is smaller than $100 million. Compounding is a bet on a long term and conceptually it is very hard to do for most humans. Most people still work on their primal instincts, how to provide for food today and tomorrow.
Compounding means not deviating course. It is very east to get distracted by various other things in life. This is incredibly hard to do.
