The Compound Effect: Jumpstart your Income, your Life, your Success
★★★★★
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Small changes maintained consistently over time lead to unexpectedly dramatic results.
- Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCEYou make your choices and then your choices make you.
- Preparation + Attitude + Opportunity + Action = LUCKEveryone is affected by three kinds of influences: input (what you feed your mind), associations (the people you spend time with), and environment (your surroundings).
🎨 Impressions
This book helped me to be more mindful of the activities that I involve myself in. Each choice starts as a behavior that over time becomes a habit. A bad habit, when compounded over months and years, can lead to a radical decline in the quality of life and divert us from achieving our goals - family, finance, and fun.
👤 Who Should Read It?
"The Compound Effect" is a valuable read for individuals seeking personal development and self-improvement - Entrepreneurs, goal-setters, or anyone looking to break bad habits. It is particularly relevant to those who want to understand how small, consistent actions can lead to significant long-term results in various aspects of life.
☘️ How the Book Changed Me
It helped me reflect upon each task that I pick up each day and the value it adds to my life and personal growth. I started logging each day to understand how optimal the day was and whether any behavior has been recurring enough times to develop into habits.
The book offered some useful frameworks to build good habits and eliminate the bad ones that can compound over time. One simple-to-implement action being "Chaining of habits" - pairing the new habit with something that you already do.
It helped me understand the importance and impact of personal and organizational influences that might have once been subconscious. I learned to be aware of who these influences are, be open to listening to their opinions, and be mindful of what I absorb from them.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
“Motivation without action leads to self-delusion.”
“Track every action that relates to the area of your life you want to improve. All winners are trackers.”
📒 Summary + Notes
Life of Darren Hardy
Rise and Shine: Wake up at 5AM. Show gratitude. Give mental love and blessings to people. Stretch. Breakfast. 30 mins of Podcast/Read. Work for 90 mins on the most important thing. At 7AM do a recalibration (Top three one-year, 5-year, and key quarterly goals and the top goal for week and the month). Review top three most valuable priorities for the day. Then check emails. Get to work.
Sweet Dreams: Retro to see how the day went and what needs to be pushed to next day. Scratch what’s no longer important. Log new ideas. Read a book.
Shake it up: plan weekly, monthly and yearly goal to do something new.
Family time: Friday night 6PM is a date night. Saturday is a family day. Sunday 6PM is a relation review (wins, losses, and adjustments in the relationship). Score on a scale of 1-10 rare your relationship. Discuss the adjustments to increase the rating. Monthly, schedule something memorable, something out of ordinary that creates and inedible memory. Quarterly, plan a 2-3 day getaway to do a deeper checking on how things are going in the relationship. Annual special travel vacation
Strategies to install good habits
Set yourself up to succeed: Stay aware of the habit that you are trying to change and you will likely succeed
Think addition, not subtraction: Instead of focusing on what you have to sacrifice, focus on what you are adding in
Go Public: Involve others in shaping your new behaviours
Find a success buddy: Find someone else who wants to achieve the same goals
Competition and camaraderie: Engage in a friendly competition with others
Celebrate: Celebrate your small wins
Strategies to eliminate bad habits
Identify the trigger: Find the cue that makes you active a habit. If you are more aware, you can control it
Clean house: Get rid of whatever enables your habits
Swap it: See what bad behaviours can be deleted, swapped, or replaced
Ease in: Take small steps if the habit is deep-rooted
Jump in: Change as many habits as possible at once