The Power of Compounding

Hi there,

The most valuable lesson I learned in high school came from an old substitute teacher who covered our calculus class for a week. On his last day, as we packed up our books, he leaned on my desk and said, “Young lady, I’m going to tell you something I wish someone had told me when I was your age.”

He wrote a single number in the corner of my notebook: 72.

“Divide it by your interest rate and that’s how long it takes for your money to double. Get a summer job, save your money, and let time do the work.”

I nodded politely, half-listening, half-eyeing the exit. But the interaction stuck with me.

So, that summer I got a job and put a couple of thousand dollars into a savings bond and slipped it into an old encyclopedia. I forgot about it for decades until I found his lesson still compounding.

The thing is everyone talks about compounding in money. But no one talks about it in life.

Einstein supposedly called compound interest “the eighth wonder of the world.” Whether or not he actually said it doesn’t matter.

We understand how $100 becomes $1,000 with time, but we rarely apply the same logic to our body, our skills, or our mind.

Because compounding doesn’t just govern money. It governs everything.

Compounding is a law of life.

And the thing about the law of compounding is it doesn’t care what you apply it to. It multiplies whatever you feed it. Good habits. Bad habits. Thoughts. Mistakes. It treats them all just the same.

The question isn’t if compounding works. It’s whether it’s working for you or against you.

Everything Compounds: The Question Is Direction

The truth is we are compounding something every single day.

The life you’re living today is the result of compounding decisions you made years ago. And the life you’ll live five years from now will be the return on the decisions you’re making today.

A strong physique is compounded by single workouts, single meals, single nights of sleep and recovery that are stacked up one after another. Musical ability is compounded by tireless moments of practice. So is writing.

Literally every domain of life has its own compounding curve.

Money: Small investments made consistently outperform one-time windfalls.
Health: Consistency beats intensity. One salad won’t fix your body; but a thousand will.
Relationships: Trust compounds through micro-actions. Break one and you reset the clock.
Reputation: Built in years, destroyed in seconds. Both compounding in opposite directions.

The Invisible Curve

When I worked at a fitness startup, we used to joke (half-seriously) that churn was part of the business model. People signed up in January with fierce resolve, but by February 1st, half of them quit.

We knew the biggest revenue driver in the industry wasn’t consistency, it was impatience. Because everyone wants exponential results. But no one has exponential patience.

That’s the thing about progress, it never looks like it’s working until it is. That’s because most of the work is invisible.

• You’re building neural pathways.

• You’re forming an identity.

• You’re laying systems that don’t pay off until the end.

It’s like pushing a snowball uphill.

At first, progress feels slow. Every push adds mass, invisible at first, but eventually, the weight flips sides.

Effort becomes momentum. Momentum becomes inevitability.

But most people stop right before gravity takes over.

Identity Compounds Faster Than Effort

Each small action is a vote for the type of person you are.

You read, you become a reader.
You create, you become a creator.
You lift, you become someone who trains.

The trick is not to think in outcomes but in identities.

Because once you identify as someone who does the work, the work becomes inevitable.

You stop forcing habits. You just are the kind of person who does them.

The Hidden Tax of Stopping & How Inconsistency Destroys Progress

But identity only solidifies through repetition. Stop, and even your best habits start to unwind.

Every time you stop, you reset the curve. You break the momentum and velocity.

That’s why “starting over” always feels harder. You’re not starting from zero. You’re starting from the debt of inconsistency.

Compounding punishes inconsistency the same way that it rewards discipline.

The only shortcut to real results is staying in the game.

Do it long enough, you see that everything meaningful compounds:

-Money
- Strength
- Reputation
- Relationships
- Confidence

But here’s the flip side: so does everything destructive.

-Debt
- Neglect
- Resentment
- Distraction

The same force builds or breaks you, depending on what you repeat.

Which brings me to the real point: the math of compounding isn’t financial, it’s existential.

READER POLL

Final Thought

Everything meaningful in life works like compound interest.

You don’t see results for a while. Then it looks like magic.

But it’s not magic. It’s math.

1% better every day for a year = 37x improvement.
1% worse every day for a year = 0.03x what you started with.

The gap between those two outcomes is built from microscopic decisions.

That’s what makes compounding both powerful and terrifying.

Compounding is not about speed. It’s about consistency.

When your habits align with your identity, and your actions align with your goals, you stop fighting the snowball and start rolling with it.

The people who seem to “effortlessly” grow aren’t more talented. They’re just accumulating more micro-decisions in the right direction.

So stop resetting the curve. Stop switching hills.

Pick your snowball. Push it long enough for gravity to take over.

Because everything compounds but only for the ones who stick with it long enough to see it.

Catch you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.