I can never really tell if life tries to point me towards certain things by having them pop up repeatedly in during my day or if the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is to blame. Recently, the concept that has been showing up over and over again is the idea of the compound effect. This is the practice that small changes over a long enough timeline lead to huge changes. No one argues that this is true, but it’s hard to get really pumped about getting rich over the course of forty years or getting ripped over the course of a decade. For the last few months of quarantine, I’ve been playing with my morning routine and diet. About four months in and I think I’ve reached a point where I’m getting benefits from all of the changes that I’ve kept and not really putting in too much work, so here’s what has been up.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been about doing the least amount of work for the most gain. In the past, I took this to mean that I should absolutely crush myself for a short amount of time to reach a goal quicker. Sam ages eighteen to twenty three can tell you that that does not quite work. I was a big fan of spending forty or so hours a week in the gym to get shredded out of my mind or super strong for some event and then when burn out eventually took over, I would go back to square one. We can blame having to hibernate in Ohio and needing all the body fat I could get, but let’s just say it was my approach’s fault, for the sake of this post. Then something would come up and it was right back to killing myself to rush back to this point. I did the same with learning a new skill or about a new subject, which is something I still regularly do but not all at once like I used to. So let’s get down to how twenty seven year old Sam keeps up the same results with probably ten percent of the effort.

One Brick At A Time

In the past, I approached everything like I was trying to build a house in one day. I overworked, I cut corners and used shoddier materials. I would take on tasks that took others years and blast them out in months. Find me the cheapest version and let me smash my way through. It’s the type of things that look really good on Instagram. “Check out this skill I learned in a week” or these abs I busted out in two months. Unfortunately, you can’t learn the intricacies of a skill or build an actually functional aesthetic body in only two months. Eventually, the missing parts start to show. The foundation can’t bear the weight of the home and you end up in a worse spot than when you started. This house analogy works better than I originally thought. I know some of you that know me are thinking “But Sam prides himself on overindulging in whatever he is doing…”, yeah, sure, but now I’m a little smarter about it.

A few years ago, I would spend every waking hour learning a new skill. Then as soon as I had confirmed I learned the skill, I would have spent any free hour I had for several months getting in insane shape, excited for any chance to rip my shirt off(my natural state) and expound on whatever latest fitness thing I was infatuated with. (Unfortunately for my close friends, that hasn’t changed too much.) At the end of all of this, I would have forgotten most of the skill and I’d be too riddled with injury to do anything with my newfound strength. These days, I spend a little time every day working towards some of those things.

This actually accomplishes a few things. I am a very obsessive personality type, if you hadn’t noticed. I overindulge in things immediately, throwing all of my money and attention at one thing the moment it interests me. This way of approaching things allows me to get as involved as I like, but because I am rationing a small window of time for each new thing, I have to choose the most important things to start/purchase to begin whatever the new thing is. If this interest falls off, I’ve invested less time and money than I do when I dive headfirst into something like I’m prepping to be the leading expert in three months. It also gives me a better means for course correction. When diving fully into a new topic, it’s easy to get misled by one source or miss important steps in the beginning. Spreading this learning over a longer amount of time allows me to figure out which means allows me to learn new topics works best for me.

This transfers to new skills in that I can usually look at a new offering and tell if it will fit my learning style, regardless of how quality the content is. My favorite consequence of this new way of approaching things is that I overindulge immediately, and then have to cut off all of the fat for it to make it into my regular routine. I can relax my whole body stretching every individual muscle when that’s at the top of my list, but if I’m being honest, stretching commands at most ten minutes of my regular day and usually ends up happening while I’m doing something else. Now, when I learn something new, I rip through all of the information and then when it gets put into practice, I figure out what pieces are giving me the biggest bang for my buck and those are the pieces that stick around and become habit.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Easily the best thing about my passion for making myself a guinea pig is that my friends get to benefit from it. Nobody wants to try all of these weird diets or random subjects, but knowing the finest points are invaluable. So here’s the good part, some actionable steps to start compounding change.

First, you’ll need some self awareness, which could be the thing you are trying to use compounding to achieve more of in the first place. Figure out what the best way to motivate yourself is. Regardless of how much I preach finding happiness outside of spending money, the easiest way to motivate me is to throw some money, then I’m bought into the whole ordeal. Prior to things being locked down, I would sign up for a competitive version of whatever I was trying to get into. I would tell people, so the fear of embarrassment was a secondary motivator, but paying for the event was always the thing that made it real in my head. These can help, but no one knows how to motivate you better than you.

If you’re not sure, you can cheat and use some known easy points. Want to start something new and can never mentally make yourself do it over over watching Netflix? Find the smallest way to add it to your day and add it into a part of your day where you are naturally context switching. Do you usually finish working and then make dinner? Throw in ten minutes of that activity before you make the dinner. It’s much easier to add activities into gaps that already exist than to get up in the middle of something you likely already enjoy more and do it. Remember, the key is to make all of this stuff easy.

Second, overindulge at first. This advice fits my personality, but I think it’s the most consistent way to get things to stick. Want to start eating a certain way? Throw everything away that doesn’t fit that diet. Stick to it for an entire month. Likely during that month you will find certain things that were in your diet that you could do without and certain things from the new diet that you enjoy adding. Boom, your regular diet has improved just like that. Humans are really good at enduring things as long as they know an ending exists, so try to do these things for about a month. If nothing else, it helps flex that self restraint muscle that we all tend to leave so underutilized.

Last, find the parts that bring the most benefit and incorporate them in a way that fits nicely into your day without being inconvenient. Perfect is the enemy of good. Focus on adding a tiny amount of quality progress every day towards something new. These small changes will gradually add up to big changes before you know it.

That’s it. I’ll leave it at that. Do a little bit now for future you, then they’ll have to make good choices to repay past them…or something like that. Until next time, take care of yourselves and wear a mask.