The Compounding Effect
Darren Hardy’s book, “The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success” is a 208-page book covering the fundamentals of creating compound effects through habit-building and conscious choices. The book includes a section of resources and tools for additional journaling prompts, assessments, and habit-building tools following the main text.
For anyone who has read books in the self-development space, this book did not include any new information; however, it did hone in on key points on the basics. Three of my key takeaways were as follows: 1/ no matter where you are in life, mentors are always needed in your different pursuits, 2/ maintaining momentum will keep you in motion and progressing towards your goals, and 3/ the person you're competing against is a past version of yourself to create a future version of yourself.
The first takeaway was a key one where whatever you are pursuing in life, there are others who are more knowledgeable in this profession and have their own history of solving similar problems that you may face. As a result, what they know can help lessen the roadblocks you have in the progression toward your pursuit. An example of this is where I am currently learning running techniques from Matt Choi (@matt_choi6) who has run multiple marathons already. He talks about many different exercises and educates his audience so that they may also learn.
The second takeaway about maintaining momentum towards your goals will keep you in motion is a key one that led me to slow down. Before, I would always dedicate a bulk amount of my time to self-development, making myself solely focused on those goals. Now, I recognize there is continual effort put into this already, and putting time and energy into other buckets such as family, friends, and relationships is just as important.
Finally, the third takeaway of competing against a past version of yourself is one where you view that version as a competitor and not you right now. They are two separate people helping each other grow. This mindset shift leaves out the comparison of you doing this before to now: the competitor showed up, and you also need to show up.
Aside from the takeaways, another highlight of this book is how it had some visuals within every chapter to highlight the main ideas. One example that I liked was a visual of three cups where the left-most cup was filled with gunky water to denote negativity and as you progressed to the right, the water eventually turned clean to show inspiration and positivity. Even though there was this visual, one drawback of the book is that it doesn’t highlight inspiration as much to aid in making compound effects. The book talks about inspiration but doesn’t dive deeper into it aside from talking about core values.
Overall, I would rate this book a 4 out of 5 stars. The author broke down the concept of building compound effects thoroughly and explained it in a way with enough stories and reasoning. There weren’t any mind-blowing concepts included that would have made this 5 stars, but it was still a good book reminder of how to instill habits.
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