Principle 3: Compound through iteration, not time.
“Compound interest is the 7th wonder of the world.”
Is Albert exaggerating a touch? Probably. But is he accurate? I think so.
Compound interest can be oh-so-glorious if you leverage it, and disastrous if you work against it. This is no more truer when it comes to improving yourself and your relationships.
Take any human.
What does it look like if that human improved by…1%, every single day? Apparently, 37 times better by the end of the year.
But what would it look like if that human regressed by 1%, every single day? They end up at 0.03 of where they started.
Getting better, evolving even, literally applies to anything - a sport, hobby, profession or skill. Anything that you can build, develop and get feedback on.
Habits, as James Clear promotes, are the currency of self-improvement. Depending on how you leverage it, you fall into one of three categories:
Growth which shows you’re evolving;
Stasis which shows you’re stuck;
Regression which shows, as the word suggests, you’re struggling.
I’ll show this visually through the graph below. Please excuse the lack of artistic flair, not my strong suit…yet.
Expectation on the left versus Reality on the right. Progress is generally non-linear and not smooth on a daily basis. But when you zoom out, it gives the illusion that it was just that. It’s full of bumps, setbacks, rapid progress, consolidation and a whole host of other states. Your time horizon changes the lens by which you view your progress.
What’s common in all these graphs? The x-axis is time. And here’s my caveat: I don’t think that time should be the x-axis. The independent variable that you track and influence.
For if that is the variable, it leaves important questions unanswered:
What are you doing with that time?
How many repetitions are you doing?
What are the quality of those repetitions?
What attention, energy and intensity do you apply to those reps?
You don’t do time. You do stuff within time. And therefore, what you do with your time is not created equal.
For me, the x-axis should paint a picture of your iterations. And more specifically, it should be the reps you put in, as if you were pumping iron at the gym. It factors both the quality and the quantity of those reps.
That’s why one of my core principles is to compound through iteration, not time. It puts the onus on action, not on scheduling the action.
How do I try and compound through iteration?
Deliberate Practice 1
When I’m learning something new, I first focus purely on volume. It’s the quantity. It’s the reps. Like going to the gym, I don’t care how heavy I’m lifting. I do my best to leave ego at the door even though I fail to do so more than I succeed. You pick a weight that’s just right (hello Goldilocks Effect) and lift.
I don’t assume that I’ll be a master of something until I’ve put the reps in, and only then, through this singular focus on activity, do I then permit myself to focus on quality. Counterintuitively, I believe if you focus on quantity in the beginning, the quality generally improves. Of course, when you reach a certain level of competency, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. But you’re at the start. You’re learning a new thing. You simply can’t be good at it if you haven’t done a lot of it.
Examples in my life include:
Number of podcasts completed;
Number of coaching sessions completed;
Number of investor meetings attended;
Number of difficult conversations with my partner; or
Number of golf swings, which is definitely in stasis!
Focus on the lead indicator (the process) and slowly edge yourself towards the lag indicator (the outcome).
Deliberate Practice 2
I accumulate all my learnings in a central document titled - you guessed it - life learnings. The focus of this document is more learnings I’ve had through experience. It could be a difficult conversation, the mistakes I’ve made, a quote that resonated with me or a question someone asked. You name it, it’s there. And I review it. At least once a month.
I do this in order to:
Encourage myself to zoom out and realise there are multiple iterations of myself;
To see if there are any repeated patterns with obstacles I encounter or mistakes I make; and
To remind myself of all the progress I’ve made and smell the roses.
Deliberate Practice 3
Again, we’re back to the relationship meetings. Please don’t yawn.
These are forums to practice - deliberately - our ability to have difficult, uncomfortable and meaningful conversations. It might be an unmet need, an overt focus on what’s not going well instead of what is, scope creep in our relationship or ambiguity in our future.
Whatever it is, we know that after this conversation, our relationship has evolved. Don’t get me wrong, it hurts. It’s never the nicest thing, at least initially, to challenge your partner or be challenged directly. But we try to remind ourselves that by putting in the reps to make our relationship better for both of us individually and collectively, we’re experiencing growth. And growth is usually uncomfortable.
Each day is an opportunity to perform a personal software update, improving current features, adding new features and removing old bugs. You start at version 1.0, and cycle through to version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. The versions are infinite. The days are not.
And that’s the game I want to play.
