So I’ve started The Compound Effect again. This book, if you don’t know it, is about how doing a little bit every day eventually adds up to succes. It is an argument against the instant gratification culture modern consumerism has made us into, and a plead for hard work, consistency and the idea that anything can be achieved, as long as you outwork your competitors.

It’s a truly inspirational book. I’m the first one to be honest and say I’m not a hard worker and I don’t like to be. This book is even a little too close to hustle culture for my liking. But the idea that a little bit everyday adds up to a successful result after a while had always fascinated me. Some examples I’ve applied in my life:

– I quit drinking sugar in my coffee, as I figured that if 1 sugarcube is 16 calories, and I had 3 cups a day, that would be 48 kcal a day. Not much, right? But then I figured that that makes 17.520 kcal a year, and if one kilo of fat is about 8000 calories, I’d only have to quit sugar in my coffee and I’d lose 2 kilos in a year. To me, giving up sugar in my coffee was not a big offer to make, and it was actually an easy win for me. All I had to do was change one habit and wait until the weight was off my body.

– I started reading 5 pages in a book a day – on weekdays only. Now 5 pages doesn’t seem like anything, but I’m not a reader, and I actually hate getting myself to do it. It’s only after I’ve read a whole book that I’m glad I did it. So cutting a book up in minuscule pieces of 5 pages is the lowest bar I can hold myself to, and still get through some books. If an average book has 300 pages, I still get to read about 4 books a year. For me, that’s 4 more than I did ever before in my life, haha. And it only takes about 5 minutes of my day, which is really almost nothing.

– I only do 1 cleaning task max a day, and not every day. Since we moved to Dallas, I quit my job and therefore we don’t have cleaning help in the house anymore. I hate the feeling of ‘losing time of my life’ to keep my house clean, so I refuse to pick 1 day in the week to clean the whole house. Instead I do 1 task on multiple days of the week – so only clean the shower, or only vacuum the house – and still get the whole house clean every week. This one task only takes me 10 minutes max (our house is not super big, and I’ve learned how to clean pretty smartly by now), so it almost doesn’t feel like cleaning at all.

And I think the list goes on and on, but you get my point: I believe in the power of doing small things everyday to achieve bigger things – without even noticing. Rereading The Compound Effect inspires me to keep this mindset going, but also reminds me to look at the areas of my life where I feel like I am not achieving anything, but only because I didn’t look at bigger picture yet. For example, on my Youtube I feel like I only get a few new subscribers a week. But since a year has 52 weeks, that’s still a lot of subscribers! And I am actually still growing every week.

For today, I just wanted to share my rekindled love for The Compound Effect and realizing that small things add up to big things. Even when you don’t know yet what the big things are, or how big they get. ‘You don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step.’ So I’ll try to remind myself that babysteps are also steps.

Have a great week,

xx Coco