The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success

“One of Dad’s core philosophies was, ‘It doesn’t matter how smart you are or aren’t, you need to make up in hard work what you lack in experience, skill, intelligence, or innate ability. If your competitor is smarter, more talented, or experienced, you simply need to work three or four times as hard. You can still beat them!’”

Hardy argues that working hard will overcome nearly all obstacles; you will rise above those who, despite talent or other advantages, don’t work as diligently. Consistent, well-designed behaviors are the key to success. Hardy uses personal anecdotes to bring home his advice.

“Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE.”

People often fail to take advantage of the principle of sustained effort because the payoff usually takes some time to accrue. The small, daily steps needed don't immediately materialize, and people become discouraged. The point of the Compound Effect is that small consistent efforts that seem to go nowhere pile atop each other until finally there is a mountain of accrued value.

“The most challenging aspect of the Compound Effect is that we have to keep working away for a while, consistently and efficiently, before we begin to see the payoff.”

Like money saved at interest, the Compound Effect works slowly at first, but the benefits of small daily good habits feed back onto themselves, growing ever more quickly, until success emerges, sometimes rather suddenly. Given enough time, consistency and patience—and having faith in the process—pay off massively.

“Our expectations of what it really takes to create lasting success—things like grit, hard work, and fortitude—aren’t alluring, and thus have been mostly forgotten. We’ve lost respect for the strife and struggle of our forefathers.”

Hardy believes that Americans have grown complacent, expecting success as a birthright. Hardy’s prescription is for people to recognize the power of consistent, small efforts, one that renews the American success story for each of them.

“[Y]ou make your choices and then your choices make you.”

Decisions we make that we’re unaware of—internalizing the rules of our culture or group without thinking, or making small choices that don’t work but are too small to notice—can pile up to cause big problems. Conscious awareness of this process, and of the choices we make, gives us an opening to take the reins of our lives and move deliberately, instead of randomly, toward success.

“The (Complete) Formula for Getting Lucky: Preparation (personal growth) + Attitude (belief/mindset) + Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + Action (doing something about it) = Luck.”

Luck may happen at random, but it happens all the time. The successful person prepares for it and, when it appears, takes advantage of it. People in bad situations can take advantage of the luck all around them, turn around their fortunes, and achieve success. Instead of waiting for luck to change our lives, we can manifest a positive attitude, prepare for success, and grab the luck that’s already there.

“The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not.”

Part of taking complete responsibility for one’s life is doing the things that need to be done to create the result one wants. People can think up countless reasons for not doing the necessary things, and, when the results don’t pan out, blame others or luck. Small, necessary things, done consistently, generate a momentum that snowballs into success.

“There’s a story about a man riding a horse, galloping quickly. It appears that he’s going somewhere very important. A man standing along the roadside shouts, ‘Where are you going?’ The rider replies, ‘I don’t know. Ask the horse!’ This is the story of most people’s lives.”

In developing and practicing good habits, we assume conscious control of our behaviors, which we can direct toward the fulfillment of our goals. Until we examine and revise our habits, we find ourselves carried along unconsciously by old behaviors that no longer serve us. The horse is a symbol for our unconscious, which will happily change course, but only if we provide it with new direction.

“Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The wisest and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values.”

The road to success can be long and grueling. Aligning that journey with one’s deepest dreams and desires not only makes the trip tolerable, it becomes the thing the journeyer yearns to do every day. To make changes for the better, a person must be powered by that intense drive, or the difficulties of the project will feel overwhelming and the project fails.

“I’m a connoisseur of nice things. But material stuff can’t really recruit your heart, soul, and guts into the fight. That passion has to come from a deeper place. And, even if you acquire the shiny object(s), you won’t capture the real prize—happiness and fulfillment.”

Most people want more money, but making that the key goal sidelines the desires that lie deep within us—to express ourselves, to make a difference to others, to create wonderful things. Money is a key that unlocks many doors, but it can’t unleash the tremendous energies we bring to projects that truly inspire us.

“Rather than letting past hurtful experiences sap our energy and sabotage our success, we can use them to fuel positive, constructive change.”

When people let misfortunes define them, they become smaller in spirit. A bad outcome is feedback from the world saying, ‘Don’t do that!’ Blaming others, or fate, won’t fix things, but acting to repair damage and making sure that future results will be positive serve to improve one’s life, increase one’s confidence, and help one avoid the cycle of complaining and resentment.

“Unsuccessful people carry their goals around in their head like marbles rattling around in a can.”

Everyone has big dreams, but most of us don’t believe we can achieve them. The dreams don’t go away: They nag at us, but we reject them as impossible. If, though, the mind keeps coming back to those dreams, perhaps we should listen. Our nervous systems aren’t stupid: If they want something, maybe they know more about our potential than we give ourselves credit for.

“Just like high-volume, low-nutrient food makes your body fat, high-volume, low-nutrient information makes your head fat. Allow too much distraction by technology and you will end up with diabetes of the mind.”

Hardy paints an analogy between unhealthy eating and toxic media consumption. Digital media—email, texts, web browsing, social and news sites, and the like—become a tremendous time waster and cause other important parts of people’s lives to suffer neglect. Media is designed to be addictive; it should be used cautiously and carefully. Hardy’s advice is to minimize use of media and concentrate instead on more productive activities. Success doesn’t come from mindlessly repetitive habits.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”

Hardy quotes American writer John C. Maxwell, who echoes Hardy’s belief that the day-to-day application of good habits slowly builds quality into your life. These new behaviors don’t have to be large or elaborate; they need only be positive contributions to your day. Their effect adds up, over time, to large benefits.

“Lack of consistency is the Achilles heel of the human species.”

The book’s key argument is that doing the right thing, a little at a time, day in and day out, is the secret for success. Life can be complicated, which becomes an excuse for falling off an improvement program. By prioritizing a regular schedule of good habits, a person can sidestep excuses and maintain a lifestyle that moves toward success.

“There is one thing that 99 percent of ‘failures’ and ‘successful’ folks have in common—they all hate doing the same things. The difference is, successful people do them anyway.”

In doing the things most people avoid, a person achieves results that those who do the avoiding do not. It’s a small price to pay for the large benefits that result, which is part of Hardy’s philosophy that hard work and going the extra mile generate big payoffs.

“If you remember your high-school physics class (you do, don’t you?), you’ll recall Newton’s First Law, also known as the Law of Inertia: Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something stops their momentum. Put another way, couch potatoes tend to stay couch potatoes. Achievers—people who get into a successful rhythm—continue busting their butts and end up achieving more and more.”

Hardy creates an analogy between behavior and a law of physics: Things don’t change unless something pushes on them. In the case of bad habits, the push comes from a person’s desire to overcome habits with consistent effort. Once the new effort becomes a habit, the momentum of forward motion continues until one is successful. In the above quote, Hardy uses conversational language to connect with the reader—“you do, don’t you?”

“So when you open up those news alerts on your phone in the morning and get bombarded with all those reports about robberies, fires, attacks, and the tanking economy, your brain lights up. Your brain will now spend all day chewing over that feast of fear, worry, negativity.”

Hardy argues that modern media is designed to capture our attention with near-continuous alarm calls about the world. Our minds don’t discriminate properly between real risks and those from thousands of miles away. This distorts our perceptions about what’s important, and our days can become warped by concerns that are not our own.

“You guard against the influences your children are exposed to and the people they hang around. You are aware of the influence these people could have on your children and the choices they might make as a result. I believe this same principle should apply to you!”

As much as people guide the growth of their children by keeping bad influences from them, people should protect their own growth by selecting friends and associates whose positive lives nudge them in their direction. Human minds continue to develop in adulthood; individuals should curate their acquaintances with growth, and not deterioration, in mind.

“Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.”

Hardy believes that friendships should inspire, and not diminish, your development. When we spend time with people we don’t really admire, we tend to adopt their negative worldview instead of a more positive one that’s better suited to us. Much better are friends who uphold standards to which we aspire.

“Each and every incomplete piece of your life exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood. Every incomplete promise, commitment, and agreement saps your strength because it blocks your momentum and inhibits your ability to move forward. Incomplete tasks keep calling you back to the past to take care of them. So think about what you can complete today.”

Hardy uses a simile, where something is compared to something else with “like” or “as.” In this case, he compares incomplete projects to a vampire depleting one’s life force. Incomplete projects block progress because they betray our commitments. A task unfinished announces that our habits interfere with success and that our beliefs uphold failure. Conversely, every job completed reinforces a sense of forward motion and success.

“[Y]ou get in life what you tolerate.”

Putting up with ongoing problems is tantamount to saying that your life has limits. Fixing problems, on the other hand, is a claim on success, on the unlimited possibilities that await you. A problem fixed is a stepping stone to the life you want.

“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”

Hardy quotes his favorite mentor, American entrepreneur Jim Rohn. Rohn’s point is that when situations challenge us, we shouldn’t shirk or complain, but rise to the occasion, become better than we thought we were, and achieve the unexpected. Problems aren’t misfortunes but opportunities—challenges to be met and transcended.