Allowing Small Changes to Compound Over Time

I have been trying to write this post for days now, and I just haven’t been feeling it. I do feel somewhat burned out, not feeling particularly great or connected to myself. There’s a lot of internal fog. And it isn’t a great place to create from, so this will be relatively short.

Incidentally, the podcast I am supposed to do next is on needing to unplug to recharge. Sometimes, you just need to take a step back. Perhaps I needed the reminder.

This week I wanted to discuss the power of making small changes, and tweaks and how they can compound over time into something great.

This is in relation to the other post about chasing goals that are out of your league.

In those cases, it is more useful to focus on the direction we need to move in, on the first steps we have to take, and what we have under our direct control, then we can begin to make progress towards our goal however small.

In focusing on the practice and the path. In doing the work and being consistent, we are able to build slowly, letting our moves stack on each other.

What we have to do is harness the power of time, making it work for us. The same way compound growth works for our money when invested. We do that by committing to making the right changes, however small and sticking to it.

If you picked up a good habit like reading, even just a little bit every day, over time it adds up — to a better vocabulary, to a better sense of the world, to new things learned. If you started a bad habit like eating junk all the time, it might blow up into some serious health issues down the line.

And it is those things that start small that sometimes have the potential to snowball out of control, so we have to fight to keep them in check, and be deliberate about taking right action, even if it is a step at a time.

Often we can’t make sweeping changes in our lives at once, but we can always start small and nurture small efforts into something that snowballs into something great.

This is what living with intention means, being able to move in the direction you want.

According to James Clear, if you get 1% better everyday for a year, you’ll end up 37x better by the end of those 365 days. Now what does 1% better look like every day? That’s anyone’s guess, but we can all pick something small to focus on, an area of life we can commit to being at least a tiny bit better everyday.

And sure we will falter. there will be days we will backslide. Days when the fog feels a bit much. But we will keep at it, as long we are focused on trending upwards.

We will be okay.

Originally published at https://otoabasibassey.com on July 28, 2021.

I am an brand strategist, designer writer and entrepreneur using my skills to help people and businesses live up to their potential.

If there was an overarching theme to what I do, it would be “The art of being + the act of creating + the space in-between“. I am interested in how we live, how we create and how the two interact and inform each other.

My obsession with personal development and constant growth sparked in my early teens remains unabated and now I share what I learn as I build a life by design.