The Rule of Incremental, Consistent Effort

Building up on an earlier post on the Multiplier effect, there’s another important rule – the rule of incremental and consistent effort. The best summary of the rule is this:

The other side of the rule suggests that if you’re consistently doing less than yesterday, how big of a negative impact would it lead to:

For those who don’t have so much of a mathematical interest in the equations, the point of this rule is that regardless of the size of base, an incremental yet consistent positive change everyday can bring in massive improvement in a year. The flip side being that a marginal yet consistent reduction can lead to massive decrease in the starting base in only a year.

This rule can practically be applied almost anywhere – savings, investments, work effort, planning goals, manual labor, personality and skill improvement – practically anywhere.

To sum up, the real power is always in the progress in whatever you do and not really where you start. This is the real reason many startups end up challenging and outperforming massive companies in the long-run. Also the reason why some people seem to keep achieving everything whereas a lot of people don’t seem to be able to much done despite spending hours at length in intermittent sprints. This is also a valid reason to consistently put our best foot forward – finally, this is how many leaders have transformed themselves and even the fate of their nations in less than their lifetime.

The One Thing This World Needs the Most

Whenever I marvel at how human beings have progressed so much in a wide range of areas including arts, literature, architecture, science and technology, I also keep thinking about things that could be even better.

Although it is heartening to see people work hard and take the entire generation forward, one thing that I feel we need the most today is kindness. Whilst people are always trying to get on the fast track to success, we may start to believe we don’t have time for that, but one of the things that distinguishes our human race from millions of other species is their ability to feel the others’ pain without having gone through it – to empathize.

We are definitely blessed to be living in a wonderful time where the determined can achieve much and create a lasting impact on a far bigger group of people than was ever possible before in our history. The legacy we need to be working to leave should be spearheaded by kindness. This will in turn also make this world a better place to live and would ensure our time here is well-spent.