Book: 20210809 to 20210816, "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy

20210809 - 1. Introduction

Distance = Time * Effort

Anything we want to achieve, it needs time and effort.

Effort always has compound effect, good or bad.

"The Power of Now" says, it's all about attention. Attention means effort. When we stop paying attention, we actually suspended our mind, and let the time flow away. That's a bad habit to most of people. I need some good habit to replace it.

Darren Hardy said that himself was the living proof of the Compound Effect. This is obvious survival bias. Al achievers believe something, doesn't mean that something is true to all the others. Gene takes huge effect, not just the Compound Effect. Many people get used to the habit that they reject to learn.

20210810 - 2. The Compound Effect in action

Why people don't pay enough attention to Compound Effect? Because it's hard to notice it in the first 90% of time.

Put $1000 into SP500 Index Fund every year (10% growth per year). For the first 25 years, it's only $98,347; in 50 years (from 25 to 75 years old), it's $1,163,909.  1,163,909/98,347=11.8

https://moneysmart.gov.au/budgeting/compound-interest-calculator

Save $1000 every year and get $98k at the end of 25 years, it sounds not much; but when it turns into $1.16M, it's a lot.

There is no silver bullet for most of the hard problems. We need time and effort, which means compound effect, to solve them. How to be healthy? How to get rich? How to make a lot of good friends? All same.

There are many things we don't know the answer. But we also know many things. If we can make some small good habits, and use them to replace some bad habits, then eventually, the compound effect will bring the good result to us. 

20210812 - 3. Choices

You cannot see what you don't look for, and you cannot look for what you don't believe in.p32

How to avoid sleepwalking? Pay attention.

How to pay attention? Write it down on a paper notepad.

By writing it down, we have to pay attention to realize what we are doing.

All winners are trackers. We can improve only if we measure it. ("How to Measure Anything")

So it's easy to improve reading speed: measure how many pages we read every hour.

To improve work efficiency: write down what we do every hour or every 4 hours.

To improve the relationship with family members and friends: write down what we say and do to them every day.

After one week or one month, we will be sensitive to bad actions, then we can stop doing them in sleepwalking mode.

We should not make the improving process painful. Writing down could be good enough to encourage ourselves to insist on it.

Starting from today, I will write down the time I used to read. For each block of time, write down the start time, start page number, end time and the end page number. It can make my reading much faster.

20210813 - 4. Habits

At any given moment, we always believe that we are not in sleepwalking mode. Why? Because we clearly remember everything just happened and everything is happening. But these memory belong to short term memory. After a few hours or even 30 minutes, they are gone. Then we feel that we were in sleepwalking mode a few hours ago, as we cannot recall the details of what just happened.

Reading is same. We may forget about the content a few hours later, if we don't move the content into long term memory area.

How to solve this problem? 1. Write it down. 2. Discuss about it with someone, or think about it in our mind.

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We are sensible to what we are thinking and what we believe. If we have a Golf car, then we can see Golf car everywhere. As there are so much information input every second, it's wise to ignore most of them. Then how do know whether we skipped some useful information? We definitely should not be in sleepwalking mode.

How to find our long term goal? Long term goal is not about external stuff, but internal status. What kind of person I want to be?

Identity is the source of power which push us forward. For me, maybe deep meditation. It must be amazing if I can control my mind, then I can get into another level.

20210814 - 5. Momentum

To set up any habit, we need to plan to do it for many years instead of a few weeks. Modern life is full of unexpected interruptions. So we need to be careful about the new routine, or else it cannot last for long time.

But we are always not busy at the beginning and at the end of a day. So it's good time to run some routine at those time points. (Maybe meditate before going to sleep?)

Habit could also be some attitude. For example, always try to complete six months of work in one week. Then we will never get bored, we will never have time for bad habits.

Another one is "think ahead think hard". For someone have this habit, it's hard to fall into traps of bad habit.

20210815 - 6. Influences

Out brain is designed by gene, and gene push brain to look for any threat or negative signals, to increase the probabilities to survive. Normally that's a big waste of our attention and time. That's why negative news are so popular. That's why people don't mind missing $10k profit to avoid $1k loss. This perception is terrible to us.

We can cut off the exaggerated negative information input. Great people don't waste their time collecting low quality news or other information.

Books and audios are all good, but we cannot discuss something with the authors. Next time when I meet someone impressive, I will definitely keep in touch with them.

A good partner is critical. The compound effect from the partner will lead to success or failure.

About environment, Darren Hardy has quite different view with "The millionaires next door". I think Darren Hardy is talking about the top 0.1%, and the latter is referring to the top 1%. Top 0.1% has the capabilities to choose the best environment, instead of save the money for investment and let the compound effect work. Put it another way: Darren Hardy put the compound effect to person, and Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko put the compound effect to wealth.

Which way is better? At least the latter is much easier, and most of people have a good chance to win.

20210816 - 7. Acceleration

It's the extras effort after you have done your best that is the difference maker. p144

The extra effort means a step further above the normal level. It's not just about effort, but also about creativity. Think ahead think hard plays a big role here.

Extra effort also means high standards to ourselves. It means to pay full attention/try our best to do even easy/simple work.

20210816 - 8. Conclusion

Motivation without action leads to self-delusion.  p159

We need to verify our thoughts. The best way to verify it, is to teach it to other people. If other people can learn and gain the expected benefit, then what we know is true, and we have master it.

The best thing I learned from this book is about measurement. Measurement make it possible to improve, and it help to pay attention to the current moment. That's helps to improve productivity.