How to leverage “the Compound Effect”

Larry (Statusquoist)	Scott (Kaizen)	Brad (Hedonist)
He’s happy or so he thinks, but occasionally complains that nothing changes.	He starts making some small, seemingly inconsequential, positive changes. 1. He begins reading 10 pages/day from a good book 2. He started listening to 30 minutes of inspirational videos on his commute to work. 3. He also chose to cut 125 calories from his diet everyday. 4. He started walking a couple thousand extra steps per day.	He makes a few poor choices. He recently bought a new big-screen TV so he can watch more of his fav programs. He’s been trying out the recipes he’s seen on Food Channel. He just want to have a little more fun in life.

At the end of 5 months:
No perceivable differences exist among Larry, Scott & Brad.

At the end of 10 months:
We still can’t see noticeable changes in any of their lives.

It’s not until we get to the end of 18th month that the slightest differences are measurable in these 3 friends’ appearances.
But at about 25, we start seeing really measurable, visible differences.
And, by month 31, the change is startling.

Brad is now FAT while Scott is TRIM. By simply cutting 125 calories a day, in 31 months, Scott has lost 33 pounds! Brad on the other hand ate 125 more calories per day in that same time frame and gained 33.5 pounds. Now he weighs 67 pounds more than Scott.
Moreover, Scott has invested almost 1000 hours reading good books & listening to self-improvement tapes; by putting his newly gained knowledge into practice, he’s earned a promotion and a raise. Best of all, his marriage is thriving.
Brad? He’s unhappy at work, and his marriage is on the rocks.
And Larry? Larry is pretty much exactly where he was 2.5 years ago, except now he’s a little more bitter about it.

The phenomenal power of Compound Effect is that simple. Like magic or quantum leaps. After 31 months, the person who uses the positive nature of the Compound Effect appears to be an “overnight success”. In reality, his profound success was the result of small, smart choices, completed consistently over time.

To Do Task: Don’t be Brad, Be Scott- Write down the half-dozen small, seemingly inconsequential steps you can take every day that can take your life in a completely new and positive direction.

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Lesson 2: Choices

Keep log of your Habits:

Carry a small notepad in back pocket and write down every single cent you spent for 30 days. Whether it is thousand dollars for new clothes or 50 cents for air to fill up tires, it all has to go down on the notepad. This will bring an instantaneous awareness of the many unconscious choices you will make that results in money pouring out of your pockets. Because you had to log everything, you will resist buying some things, just so you didn’t have to take out notepad and write it in the dang book! Keeping a money log for 30 days straight will cement a new awareness in you and likely to create completely new set of choices and disciplines around your spending.

Tracking is Author’s go-to transformation model for everything that ails him and insists on tracking your behavior for at least 1 whole week. It works because it brings moment-to-moment awareness to the actions you take in the area of your life you want to improve.

You cannot manage or improve something until you measure it.

Let’s say the category you choose is getting your eating under control because you want to lose weight. Your task is to write down everything you put in your mouth, from the pastries, potatoes and salad you have at dinner to those many tiny choices during the day.

Time is of the Essence

It’s never too late to reap the benefits of the Compound Effect. Suppose you’ve always wanted to play the Piano, but feel it’s too late because you’re about to turn 40. If you start now, by the time you’re retirement age, you could be a master, as you’ll have been playing for 20 years! The key is to start NOW.
All you have to do I improve yourself, your performance, and your output and earnings by 1/10 of 1% each workday. That is 1/1000. Do it daily on weekdays and you’ll improve by 1/2% each week equalling 2% each month which compounded adds up to 26% each year.

Your life is the product of your moment-to-moment choices.
Since your outcomes are all a result of your moment-to-moment choices, you have incredible power to change your life by changing those choices. Step by step, day by day, your choices will shape your actions until they become habits, where practice makes them permanent.

To do Task: Start tracking at least one behavior in one area of your life you’d like to change and improve ( eg: money, nutrition, fitness, or any other area of your choice)

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Lesson 3: We are creatures of Habits

I’ve met and worked with many great achievers, CEOs and superstars and I can tell you they all share one common trait- they all have good habits.

Darren Hardy

Successful people aren’t necessarily more intelligent or more talented than anyone else. But their habits take them in the direction of becoming more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent , better skilled and better prepared.

Start by Thinking Your Way Out of the Instant Gratification Trap

We should realize that logging 3 hours a night watching Dancing with the Stars and new Series on Netflix will leave us with 3 fewer hours to read a good book or listen to terrific audio. So why are we so irrationally enslaved by so many bad habits???
Its because of our need for immediate gratification that can turn us into most reactive, non thinking animals around.

If your next puff of a cigarette instantly mutated your face into that of a weathered 85-year-old, chances are you’d pass on that. If the first forkful of cake instantly put 50 pounds on your frame, saying “no thank you” to dessert would be the true piece of cake.

The problem is that the payoff or instant gratification derived from bad habits often far outweighs what’s going on in your rational mind concerning long-term consequences. Indulging in our bad habits doesn’t seem to have any negative effects at all in the moment.

It’s time to WAKE UP and realize that the habits you indulge in could be compounding your life into repeated disaster. The slightest adjustments to your daily routines can dramatically alter the outcomes in your life. Supersmall, seemingly inconsequential adjustments can and will revolutionize everything.

Uprooting bad habits that have grown into mighty oaks is going to be arduous and difficult; to see the process through will require something greater than even the most relentless determination- willpower alone won’t cut it.

All of the HOWS will be meaningless until your WHYS are powerful enough.

If I were to put a 10 inch wide, 30 foot long plank on the ground and say,”If you walk the length of plank, I’ll give you 20$.” Would you do it? Of course, it’s an easy 20 bucks.
But what if I took the same plank and made a roof-top bridge between two 50 story buildings? That same 20$ will no longer looks desirable to even try walking the plank.
However, if your child was on the opposite building which is on fire, would you not walk the length of the plank to save him? Without question and immediately- you’d do it, 20$ or not.

The risks and the dangers are the same. What changed? Your WHY changed- your reason for wanting to do it. You see, when the reason is big enough, you will be willing to perform almost any how.

What stands between YOU and YOUR GOAL is your behaviour.

Your life comes down to this formula:
YOU–> CHOICE (decision) + BEHAVIOUR (action) + HABIT (repeated action) + COMPOUNDED (time) =GOALS

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Lesson 4: Game Changers: 5 Strategies for Eliminating Bad Habits

The key is to make your why-power so strong that it overwhelms your urges for instant gratification. And for that, you need a new game plan.

1. Identify your Triggers:
   Look at your list of bad habits. Figure out the Big 4’s –“Who”, “What”, “Where”, and “When” underlying each bad behavior.
   
   
2. Clean House:
   If you want to stop drinking alcohol, remove every drop of it from your house. If you want to eat more healthfully, clean your cupboards of all the crap, stop buying junk food.
   Don’t bring it into the house, period. Get rid of whatever enables your bad habits.
   
   
3. Swap It:
   Look again at your list of bad habits. How can you alter them so that they’re not as harmful? Can you replace them with healthier habits or drop-kick them altogether?
   Eg: A guy from work had a habit of drinking 8-10 Diet Cokes a day. I suggested him to replace them with low sodium carbonated water, adding fresh lime to it. He did this for a month before realizing he didn’t need the carbonation at all and switched just to plain water.
   
   
4. Ease In:
   For some of your long-standing and deep-rooted habits, it may be more effective to take small steps to ease into unwinding them.
   
   
5. Or Jump In:
   Not everyone is wired the same way. Some researchers have found that it can be paradoxically easier for people to make lifestyle changes if they change a great many bad habits at once. Just as the body adjusts to a changing environment through a process called homeostasis, we have a similar homeostatic ability to adjust to unfamiliar behavior changes. And usually, we can regulate ourselves physiologically and psychologically to the new circumstances quite quickly.

To do task: Identify 3 bad habits and 3 new habits to replace it with. Find your Why Power.

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Lesson 5: Influences

Everyone is affected by 3 kinds of influences:

1. Input (What you feed your mind)
2. Associations (The people with whom you spend time)
3. Environment (Your surroundings)

Input: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Are you feeding it news summaries or mind-numbing sitcoms?

Your brain is not designed to make you happy. It has only 1 agenda in mind: Survival. It is always watching for signs of “lack and attack”. Your brain is programmed to seek out the negative – dwindling resources, destructive weather, whatever’s out to hurt you.

Controlling the input has a direct and measurable impact on your productivity and outcomes.

Don’t Drink Dirty Water: Your thought process, the conversation in your head, is at the base of the results you create in life. So the question is, What are you thinking about? What is influencing and directing your thoughts? The answer: Whatever you’re allowing yourself to hear and see.
Your mind is like an empty glass; it’ll hold anything you put into it. You put in sensational news, salacious headlines, talk show rants and you’re pouring dirty water into your glass. If you’ve got dark, dismal, worrisome water in your glass, everything you create will be filtered through that muddy mess, because that’s what you’ll be thinking about.
So, Flush out the negative (dirty water) with positive, inspirational, and supportive ideas (clean water)

How to do it?

Step 1: Stand Guard:
Put yourself on a Media Diet. The great danger of media is that it gives us a very perverted view of the world. Because the focus and the repetition of messaging is on the negative, that’s what our minds start believing. This warped and narrow view of what’s not working has a severe influence on your creative potential. It can be crippling. Moreover, 99% of all news has no bearing on your personal life or your personal goals, dreams, ambitions anyway. You can set up few RSS feeds identifying the news and industry updates that do pertain to your direct interests and goals.

Step 2″ Enroll in Drive-Time U
Its not enough to eliminate negative input. To move in a positive direction, you must flush out the bad and fill up on the good. Brian Tracy had popularised the concept of turning one’s car into a mobile classroom. By listening to instructional CDs as you drive, you gain knowledge equivalent to 2 semesters of an advanced college degree- every year. This commitment, in combination with your reading routine, separates you from the herd of average.

Associations: Who’s Influencing you?