My Biggest Takeaways from “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy

I’ve been a deliberate reader for the past 4+ years, reading sometimes a book a month, and more recently a book every 1–2 weeks. I’ve now taken my commitment to reading more seriously, wanting to read 2 books per week. And in order to help me process my learning better, I’ve decided to commit to writing my biggest takeaway from a book, so here it is for “The Compound Effect“.

The author argues that you don’t have much control over huge actions that will change your life. For example, if you want to lose weight, you can’t starve yourself for one day and accomplish it. Instead, it’s the result of consistent effort over time. He also then talks about small, seemingly inconsequential actions, like cutting back your calorie count by 125 calories each day (really small, almost imperceptible), or choosing to drink water instead of a Diet Coke (again, really small actions). Here’s the thing about these actions: they’re so small you will see virtually zero results in the short term — it’s true, whether you drink one Diet Coke or not today won’t have a measurable impact on your health. However, if you do this every day, every week, every month, EVENTUALLY there will come a point where these small, seemingly inconsequential actions will add up to something significant.

I’ve experienced this first-hand with doing P90X3, although admittedly that’s 30 minutes, not a small action, but also not a HUGE undertaking. The author presents the story of 3 friends, one who chooses to stay the same, another one who chooses to eat dessert at the end of his dinner, and another one who chooses to cut back his calorie intake by 125 calories at dinner. After 3 months, they all are still the same, but after 9–12 months, and beyond, the first one is the same, the second one has put on weight, and the third one has lost weight.

Here’s what I take away from this: in my daily life, choose the better option, even if it is small, even if it seems inconsequential: doing 5 more pushups, choosing — just for today — to forego my Diet Coke and drink water, just jotting down 3 things in my gratitude journal, making that 30-second call to a friend (sure it’s not the 2-hour get-together I would hope for, but it’s something). They’re small, but over time, they will make my life significantly better.

Here’s an animated review of the book “The Slight Edge”, which presents a similar argument.

And here’s the link to the book on Amazon.