On compounding efforts

The other night, my friend and I were catching up on the phone. I was telling her about how I’ve come to enjoy running and that I just completed four 5Ks this past month. A year ago, I couldn’t imagine saying that out loud. Later that night, I got to thinking about how other things in my life that I started doing years ago have quietly compounded into something bigger.

I’ve been reading at least 15 minutes a day for the last year and a half. I read books I enjoy, I quit ones that don’t click with me, and I try to get one actionable idea from each book. By the end of 2024, I had read 13 books compared to barely a book the year prior. This year, I raised the goal from 12 to 15. As of now, I only have one left, and I’ll likely crush this goal by a mile by the end of 2025. Reading used to be an afterthought. I used to hoard so many books but never really opened them. Now it’s something I look forward to, I love discovering new books and making time to read them, especially after setting up my iPad mini as a dedicated reading device.

Journaling has been a huge part of my life since 2019. In the beginning, it was mostly a work journal. Eventually, I warmed up to myself more and began to write about uncomfortable feelings, not just the logical explanations I used to convince myself were the only valid way to see things. Working through it in writing — even when all I wanted was to hold everything in and hope it would magically go away — helped me stay sane in tough times and taught me how to deal with difficult emotions more effectively. It also helped me become a better communicator and writer.

I’ve gotten quite good at tracking every amount I earn and spend, plus maximizing credit card points and cashback. At first, it felt tedious and a little bit time-consuming because I was figuring out how to set up a system that would stick. But once everything was in place, good spending habits became second nature. I’ve been able to set realistic financial goals and hit them every year since I started taking personal accounting seriously.

In the earlier years of my career, designing something over and over again, each iteration or change in requirement demanding yet another round of revisions, was sometimes quite frustrating. Fortunately, that didn’t discourage me. I leaned into the process even more. Each new edit and redesign only brought me more clarity. To this day, the extra iterations and preparation have never felt like a wasted effort. Now, the difference between good and great design has become intuition.

These seemingly separate habits were all the same thing, I realized: small, deliberate efforts that felt uncomfortable at first, then became second nature through repetition. Each thing helped me learn that I could trust myself to follow through. I also learned that consistency holds much more weight than intensity. I didn’t write for hours when I started journaling, or run 5Ks on my first tries, or read entire books in one sitting. But I showed up, even when I didn’t feel like it.

Looking back, I’m not the same person I was a year ago, or two years ago, or five years ago when I started journaling. Like compound interest, actions build upon themselves. I’m glad I started some of these things early. These small efforts I repeated didn’t just create habits, they’ve shaped who I am far more than any single big event ever did.