Improve Your Life Using the Compound Effect

The compound effect can improve your life because it is about working a little each day on your goals because this effort can lead to exponentially large pay-offs in all areas of your life.

When working for a little each day on long-term goals, it can feel almost pretty doldrum. You are working, but you are not seeing any big payoffs. However, when you are working on your goals each day and working smartly, you are steadily making progress – even if it doesn’t seem like it.

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy explores the compound effect as it applies to our professional lives and skill development. I am a big fan of equations, and Hardy lays out the compound effect as

Small, smart choices + consistency + time = Radical Difference

How the Compound Effects Works

Hardy illustrates how using the compound effect can improve your life by talking about three exactly similar friends, Larry, Scott, and Brad.

Larry changes nothing, Brad starts making poor decisions, and Scott starts making slightly improved decisions. One of which is Scott ate 125 calories less every day while Brad started eating 125 calories more.  After thirty-three months, Scott has lost 33.5 pounds, while Brad gained 33.5 pounds and is a total of 67 pounds heavier than his friend. The weight-gain is a quick illustration of what small changes can do for us. Small changes benefit us significantly, especially if that logic is applied to skill development, and trying to improve your life. Slight improvements each day will add up over the long-run and lead to lasting change. Time is moving anyway, might as well use it to your advantage.

Favorite Take-Aways from the Compound Effect

1. You own 100 percent of your life

“You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return. Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent of responsibility will it work…you alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.”

Dan Hardy

Hardy explains how luck and circumstances aren’t what matters. It doesn’t matter how the economy is doing or what anybody said. You are still in 100 percent control of you. I agree with this thought, but do be careful to also show self-compassion to yourself along the way.

Taking ownership of your life is an empowering mindset. It eliminates any victim mindset we might have. Certain events are traumatizing that isn’t our fault, and we should seek help for those situations. Also, certain things are not in our control, like an organization down-sizing and having to lay-off your department. However, you can control how you respond.

We shouldn’t make the bad situation worse by being self-destructive. We should seek the help we need and correct your course. In the career example, this is why we should always have a plan z. Control how you react, and work towards your goal. Issues that are no fault of yours will arise, but you can still deal with them when you feel like you are 100 percent responsible for your life. Your mental well-being, your career, and pursuing your goals.

The key idea, take control of your life. It is in your control, despite outside circumstances and the past or present constraints. Work every day to improve your life.

2. Set Better Goals

“If you are not making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making, it simply because your goals are not clearly defined…whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon…must inevitably come to pass!”

Dan Hardy

When you have your compelling why you can defeat anyhow. Visualize your dream in rich detail and look for it. To illustrate, think about a time you were looking to buy a specific model car. Then what happened? You saw that car everywhere when before you never saw it before.

We are bombarded with information every day, and we learn to selectively dismiss a lot of the noise. When we tune our dial to something, all of a sudden, we see it everywhere. Successful people are in tune with their goals in life. They know what their goals are. Successful people visualize the goal, they write them down, make plans, model other successful people, and they look for opportunities every day to go after those goals. People who don’t hit their goals often do not know what their goals are in the first place are. They don’t know what they are going for, so they don’t recognize the opportunities when they present themselves.

Be tuned into your goals helps you pursue them every day and work towards them. Aim for whole life balance goals as well, in all of our areas. Use WOOP to help figure out what your goals are.

3. Change your habits to work for you and use the positive momentum

To work towards your goals, you need to build the habit of pursuing them daily. People make time for what they value.  Build pursuing your goals into a habit. Keep the positive momentum of the healthy habit going and let it feed into itself each day.

4. Change is hard

“[successful and unsuccessful people] – they all hate doing the same thing, the difference is successful people do them anyways. Change is hard.”

Dan Hardy

Be patient with yourself as you take responsibility for your life, set goals, and make your habits work for you. It is easy to come home every day and watch Netflix while your goals sit in the background. However, this won’t lead to that improved life you want.

Lasting change is hard, and that is okay. Be patient with the process, trust in your goals, and work towards that life.

5. Check who is influencing you

“according to research by social psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, your reference group determines as much as 95% of your success or failure in life.”

Dan Hardy

Who do you spend your time with? People you most admire or people who drain you? There is the saying that we are the combination of the five people we spend most of our time with. This can be empowering, or disempowering based on our current situation. Luckily, from point 1, we know who we spend time with is in our control. you can separate the negative influences and work on cultivating the relationships you would like to have.

Look for the people you would like to be more like in each area of your life. Reach out to them and see if you can spend more time with them. Some might be friends that are a positive influence, others could be professionals you could turn into mentors, and others might be thought leaders. There are several thought leaders I have never met, like Angela Duckworth with her work on studying Grit, but you can still learn from them. I read their papers, books, and watch their talks. I learn what I can from them.

Look to the areas in your life you want to improve and look to people in your life who are already successful in that domain. Maybe ask your in-shape friend if you can go to the gym with him? Ask the friend who has her finances to coffee and ask for her help. Asking for help can be a little scary and humbling. However, realize you are getting insight from the very people you want to be like in that specific area. You don’t have to admire everything about them, but if they are baseline a good person, and excel in one area, learn from that in that excelled area. Look for positive influences and see how you can cultivate relationships with them.

Main Take-Aways

• You are 100 percent in charge of your life. In every area, despite the circumstances, we are responsible for our lives. We can have short-term setbacks, but it is up to us to take responsibility for the over-arching theme of our life.
• Set better goals, build in daily habits that work towards those goals, acknowledge change is hard, and go execute on that improve your life mindset!
• Small actions everyday compound on each other, leading to lasting and significant changes in our lives.

Action Items

Write down one goal you would like to have completed in one year. Visualize what this goal looks like and WOOP it. From there, build in a habit to make that goal happen every day. Look to people who have already completed that goal, and learn as much as possible from them as well.