Eating Ice Cream Once a Week Can Lead to a Divorce
I’ll be the first to admit it on a professional platform like this. I’ve lied in my interviews.
Now before you judge me, I want to put it out there that I think I’m a pretty honest person. I take out the trash. I do the dishes. Sometimes, I wash my hands.
I just can’t seem to 100% truthfully answer this one interview question.
“What is your biggest weakness?”
If I did answer it 100% truthfully, I probably would have missed out on a lot of jobs. And obviously, I wanted those jobs. So I would always instead respond with “public speaking.”
Who doesn’t get nervous in front of crowds?
It’s an easy way to prevent myself from getting overly exposed, and I can avoid giving away my true weakness — laziness. Compared to other general managers of hotels, I’m pretty lazy.
It’s a problem.
I remember one night when the hotel was fully booked. At 8 PM (prime time for guests to shower), a pipe piece got stolen and more than a hundred guests immediately had no water. I got the wonderful news just as I was about to dig into a bowl of soup.
“The hotel has no water, and we’ve already had 15 complaints! Everyone is yelling at me. What do I do??”
My lazy instincts told me to end the call and continue on with dinner.
“Man, thats sucks. I hope it works out for you.”
Luckily I didn’t. I sucked it up and went to go fix the problem. But this is the kind of internal struggle that I face on a day-to-day basis.
Now even though I will never be able to fully get rid of my laziness, I have learned to manage it pretty well. And I want to share with you a book that has been incredibly helpful to the process.
It approaches the issue differently from the usual stuff you see on Google like “time management” and “creating a calendar” (yes, I have tried looking up “how to not be lazy” on Google before).
It introduces a game-changing mindset that has shifted the way I look at things.
Book: The Compound Effect
As a lazy person reading the book, I have to say that the author, Mr. Darren Hardy, is pretty intimidating.
He’s not afraid to tell it to you straight up.
In the introduction, he basically attacks all the businesses and marketing people that claim you can be successful without hard work. He goes on to say that the process of becoming successful might even be boring.
If you have an aversion to work, discipline, and commitment, you’re welcome to turn the TV back on and put your hopes in the next infomercial…
^exactly what a no-BS type of guy would say.
It wasn’t easy to take in the reality of what he was saying, and there were even times when I put down the book because I didn’t like what he said.
But I‘ve got to say — Mr. Hardy got to me.
It’s been two years since I first read the book, and most of the concepts from it still stick with me today. Here’s a formula that captures what the “Compound Effect” is all about:
Small smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference
Imagine two people.
Bob decides to stop eating frosted flakes every morning. No big deal.
Tom wins a sweepstakes for a lifetime of free ice cream and he’s adding on additional servings of free ice cream once a week.
No big deal.
And after 5 months… it’s no big deal!! Bob and Tom look exactly same.
They also look exactly the same at Month 10 and Month 15. The only difference is that Bob no longer craves cereal and Tom is enjoying the hell out of his free ice cream.
At Month 18, some of Bob and Tom’s friends start to notice something different about them. The friends can’t really tell what it is — there’s just something off.
At Month 25, people are starting to ask Bob if he’s been dieting. For Tom, there’s a noticeable growing belly in his recent Facebook pictures.
At Month 27, Bob continues to get compliments and Tom is starting to realize that he really is getting fat.
At Month 31, Bob is feeling super confident about his body and he decides to get a gym membership to take it to the next level. Tom, on the other hand, also gets a gym membership.
But it’s because his wife left him.
Small smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference
The big changes, positive or negative, don’t happen in a very long time. In this scenario, no changes were visible for more than 2 years. At the end of year 2, both of them looked exactly the same.
But it only took 6 months after that for Tom to lose his wife.
And that’s the beauty of the Compound Effect.
Once change finally comes, it comes fast. It comes freaking fast. When the momentum is set (Darren Hardy calls it “Big Mo’), it becomes an unstoppable train that plows everything in its way. And according to the book, that’s how lives are changed.
Now I wish I could give you my own success story of how the Compound Effect has changed my life and how I am ultra-successful now because I followed the principles in the book.
But if I did that, I would be completely contradicting everything I just said. I’m inexperienced and I’m in my 20’s. It’s delusional for me to expect the Compound Effect to work its magic anytime soon.
This is not good news for Lazy Me. Lazy Me does not like the idea of putting in work and not seeing results.
But you know what?
In its own weird way, it’s also pretty fucking liberating.
If I consistently work at something, and nothing happens, it’s okay!
Let’s use this medium post as an example.
I’ve been writing these Medium articles to put myself out there and connect with other like-minded business people (it can get quite lonely ). It would be especially cool if this reaches some of my fellow hoteliers.
Now given how new I am to writing in general, there’s a very good chance that I will be talking to a wall.
But screw it.
Nothing is supposed to happen yet.
Lazy Me might say, “You’re not seeing any results. What’s the point?”
But this is a loser’s mentality. (I wrote another Medium piece that deep dives into this.)
According to the book, if you’re planning on being successful, you’re playing the long game. You don’t care about any of the short-term results. You’re patient and you’re consistently working on those small smart choices.
Small smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference
Follow the formula and the Compound Effect will work its magic.
It’s a fact.
Big Mo’ will hit ya.
And before you can even process what happens next, everything will change.
