The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success

by Darren Hardy

“It doesn’t matter how smart you are or aren’t, you need to make up in hard work what you lack in experience, skill, intelligence, or innate ability.

“Be the guy who says ‘no.’ It’s no great achievement to go along with the crowd. Be the unusual guy, ‘Be The Exception’”

The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices.

What they don’t realize is that these small, seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will create a radical difference. Let me give you a few detailed examples. Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE

The most challenging aspect of the Compound Effect is that we have to keep working away for a while, consistently and efficiently, before we begin to see the payoff.

The secret to success was then, and is now, hard work, discipline, and good habits.

I want you to know in your bones that your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time. Know,

“You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return,” he said. “Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.”

You alone are responsible for what you do or don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.

If it was to be, it was up to me.

“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation”

The (Complete) Formula for Getting Lucky: Preparation (personal growth) + Attitude (belief/mindset) + Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + Action (doing something about it) = Luck

The magic is not in the complexity of the task. The magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the Compound Effect. So,

The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not.

Living Your Best Year Ever: A Proven System for Achieving BIG GOALS (LivingYourBestYearEver.com).

“If you want to have more, you have to become more. Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.”

Your life comes down to this formula:

INSANE PRODUCTIVITY curriculum (InsaneProductivity.com).

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”

Lack of consistency is the Achilles heel of the human species.

There is one thing that 99 percent of “failures” and “successful” folks have in common—they all hate doing the same things. The difference is, successful people do them anyway. Change is hard. That’s why people don’t transform their bad habits and why so many people end up unhappy and unhealthy.

Ordinary is easy. Extra-ordinary is what will separate you from the crowd.

If it’s hard, awkward, or tedious, so be it. Just do it. And keep doing it, and the magic of the Compound Effect will reward you handsomely.

The Compound Effect—the positive results you want to experience in your life—will be the result of smart choices (and actions) repeated consistently over time. You win when you take the right steps day in and day out. But you set yourself up for failure by doing too much too soon.

Remember, consistency is a critical component of success.

Winning the race is all about pace. Be the tortoise. The person who, given enough time, will beat virtually anybody in any competition as a result of positive habits and behaviors applied consistently. That’ll

Everyone is affected by three kinds of influences: input (what you feed your mind), associations (the people you spend time with), and environment (your surroundings).

It’s important to understand that your brain is not designed to make you happy. Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival.

We can protect and feed our minds. We can be disciplined and proactive about what we allow in.

John Wooden reinforced that point to me when he shared, “Mentoring is your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It is why you get up every day. To teach and be taught.”

“Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.”

you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”

When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your more powerful, triumphant, and victorious self.

You can do more than expected in every aspect of your life.

I’m a contrarian by nature. Tell me what most people are doing and what’s popular, and I will typically do the opposite. If everyone is zigging, I’m gonna zag. To me, what’s popular is average, it’s what’s common. Common things deliver common results. The most popular restaurant is McDonald’s, the most popular drink is Coca-Cola, the most popular beer is Budweiser, the most popular wine is Franzia (yeah, the stuff that comes in a box!). Consume those “popular” things and you’ll be part of the common, average pack. But that’s ordinary. There’s nothing wrong with ordinary. I just prefer to shoot for extraordinary.

It takes very little extra to be EXTRAordinary.

Motivation without action leads to self-delusion.