Compounding
Compounding is the essence of sustainable productivity. What I write on productivity does not offer you immediate returns. You need to make foundational changes to benefit from my articles. However, when you change the state of your mind and continuously build upon yourself, the outcome will also be extraordinary. A productivity hack like taking a cold shower can boost your energy for a few hours, but it’s not sustainable. You cannot compound on that because you don’t gain anything by taking a cold shower. Unlike these productivity hacks you can find everywhere, getting quality sleep, for example, can provide sustainable gains. Then you can also build upon your gains because once you have good sleeping habits, your body will function better on an ongoing basis.
Initially, the term compounding is used in the field of economics. “Compound interest is the addition of interest to the principal sum of a loan or deposit, or in other words, interest on interest,” writes Wikipedia. What’s intriguing in this definition is the interest on interest. You gain not only from what you have but also continuously build on what you earn. Let’s say you have 100 coins. You came across a magical place called Coinbank, which offered you a 1% daily interest on your coins. The banker also gave you two options: You can keep investing the principal sum and collect your daily gains, or you can reinvest what you gain every day and thus increase your sum for the next day. With the first approach, you calculate that you’ll end up with 365 new coins at the end of the year, making your sum 465. “Wow,” you think, “that’s pretty cool!” Then you do the same calculation for the second option. Since you’ll gain a cumulative interest on your coins, your gain will be a bit more than the previous day. On the first day, you’ll get one new coin. On the 365th day, your sum will become 3778 coins—eight times better than the first option.
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There are many ways to express the idea of compounding when it comes to improvement. Being one percent better every day is a generic motto that you can apply to any area where improvement is necessary. There is a Sino-Japanese word Kaizen denoting continuous improvement. It is a practice Japanese businesses adopted after World War II. The western world most notably learned this practice with the Toyota Way, but it also has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, and banking.”
No matter how it’s called or used, the overall idea is that you improve in small steps but continuously. There is even a phenomenon called Seinfeld Strategy named after the comedian Jerry Seinfeld saying that you should not break the chain so that the compounding effect can continue. He famously said that he comes up with a new joke every day—he even pressures himself to do it even though he doesn’t feel like doing it.
Artist: Gülfemin Buğu Tekcan — cosmodotart
I was thinking about writing and perhaps theoretically proving how the compounding effect can help individuals reach their goals. After some thinking, I noticed that compounding is so accurate and almost like a non-abstract concept. You can see concrete outcomes in economics if you give enough time. Money, by default, is quantifiable and thus easy to show. What similar concept could I use, then I thought, to show the same effect outside of economics and without being abstract? It wasn’t a long search before I came up with a running challenge myself: I will run a marathon by following my run one percent more everyday agenda.
What am I going to achieve? Well, the longest I ran was a half marathon in 2018. Unfortunately, I injured myself afterward, and then I stopped running altogether when my daughter was born in 2019. Although I have a running history, I feel like a beginner. To prove that it’s possible to achieve your goals by getting slightly better every day, I’m going to begin by running only a single kilometer—and then I’m going to increase the distance by one percent each run. It’s going to take some time (376 runs, to be exact), but in the end, I’m going to achieve my goal of running a marathon. I’m not starting from 5K (and decreasing the number of total runs to 214) because I want to show that it’s possible to go from the absolute minimum to the wanted result. The approximate plan looks like this:
Rules
Until achieving a 10K distance on the 232nd day, you can only take one rest day between runs. If you take more than one rest day, you need to decrease your distance by one percent for the next run. After achieving 10K, I need to readjust this rule because it will get tougher to finish longer distances.
You are not allowed to go beyond your distance considerably. For example, if you need to run 6.42 kilometers on a specific run, you should not run 7 kilometers, although you feel like it. Going beyond is against the motivation of this challenge. You need to take small steps towards a big target.
If you go out for running but cannot complete the distance for some reason, it doesn’t count as a rest day. Showing up counts and contributes to creating long-term habits.
It’s a long challenge. I want to make it through, and I honestly don’t know if I will be able to. Yet, the whole challenge does not feel like massive work because I’ll be able to crush it little by little every day. In the end, if I can finish it like I set out to do, the whole challenge will shine like a quantifiable example to the compounding effect.
PS: I created an Instagram account called @run1percent to track progress. If you’d like to join me in this challenge, feel free to write a comment below.
Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret on Lifehacker