🌱 Our ego stops us from compounding

Here’s your 3 insights in 3 minutes. 

🔍 Big Numbers Need a Translation

Elon just became the first trillionaire on paper.

I don’t really care much about that, but I was curious how big a trillion actually is.

One trick is to convert big numbers into seconds. 

A million seconds = 12 days

A billion seconds = 32 years

A trillion seconds = 32,000 years

Bonkers. 

That’s the weird thing about big numbers. They’re hard to grasp until you translate them. 

Compound interest is similar. 

Investing $1k/month for 10 years at 8% becomes $183K.

Keep investing the same amount for 40 years and it becomes $3.5M.

That’s why I like charts like this.

They make the invisible visible.

📈 Invisible Compounding 

We “know” compounding works.

But yet mostly ignore it. 

The unsexy part is that most compounding is invisible at first. 

One piece of content doesn’t change your life. One workout doesn’t change your body.

One honest conversation doesn’t change your relationship. 

But each can make the next one easier, better, or more likely. 

That’s interest(ing).

💪 Invisible Ego

The mistake is waiting until the action feels big enough to be worth it.

But compounding usually starts before our ego prefers.

$100/month.

A bad draft.

A 20-minute workout that’s kind of miserable.

The first rep rarely feels meaningful because it doesn’t match the identity we want yet.

But compounding doesn’t care if the first rep is impressive.

It only cares if the first rep happens.

Our ego wants the action to look impressive. Compounding just wants it to repeat.

Salud,
Mitchell