From today’s conversation with someone:
I: “If you can go back to the 20 year old version of yourself, what tip would you give him?”
Person X: (after a pause) “I’ll teach him about the importance of sticking to one thing for a long time. There’s enormous power in doing one thing until you reap the benefit of the compounding effect.”
This doesn’t mean you should drudge on with something you hate. But, you shouldn’t keep bouncing around until you find the perfect thing either – that’s like, keep marrying until you find a perfect spouse.
People these days, especially the young generation, are looking for a quick answer. People ask questions like this all the time – How can I become a big Youtuber? Well, it’s simple – just keep doing it. If you post a cat video every single day at 12pm for the next 3 years, chances are you might become one of the biggest cat Youtubers in the world.
Remember compounding also means it’s likely things will be very slow at the beginning; e.g. the first year, nothing; year 2 still extremely slow, then year 3 exponential growth all of a sudden. That’s how compounding usually works. People only look at “the biggest cat Youtuber” part – but only few people can keep uploading cat videos every day, even if they have 12 subscribers at the end of year 1.