Compounding our way to strength?
Strength does not come from just one source, steel is a mixture of carbon and iron, it would be weaker if one element was missing, it is in combining the virtues of both of them that we produce greater resilience and move to a better position. How and why someone thought to mix the two elements is lost to time, though it was probably just sheer nature human curiosity combined with the knowledge that unexpected things happen when you mix things together. After all who would have thought that two gases, oxygen and hydrogen would make water the single most incompressible substance in the world, you can squeeze rocks into diamonds but a litre of water is always the same size except if you freeze it, in which case it gets bigger, which is mind blowing, the reason the earth is not frozen solid and that we even exist. Our lives depend on compounding it is so obvious from nature that life is better when we combine different qualities and yet we pursue lives of single strengths, careers and mastery.
Gone are the days of a single occupation for the whole of your life, the arrow of history is a straight line from when your destiny was marked at birth to the limitless freedom that we have today in you are one of the lucky few who has the intelligence that can set them free. For thousands of years, who were peasants and kings was entirely decided by who your parents were, as technology and education freed up those fixed destinies it was possible to move from working class to middle class (though this was still the exemption), intelligence was an asset that could be farmed and not wasted as it was need to make full use of those technologies.
We have seen in the past century a rapid movement from jobs for life to the gigging economy of today, which has increased the degrees of personal freedom to move up in the world whilst trading certainty for many. Most billionaire today are self-made however it has come at the cost of a fair sharing of the capitalist pie for many millions. Indeed labour is becoming less and less valuable in comparison to ideas or intellectual capital, the only thing worse than being exploited is being irrelevant as so many angry people can tell you today. There are solution to this inequality, universal basic income allows vital resources to be shared in the fairest way possible, though I would not wait for someone to throw me a lifesaver whilst drowning in the sea, save yourself first and even in such a caring world, you would still want to get ahead and increase your value to others.
It is no longer possible to rely on a single strength to protect us in the modern world even if we wanted to, you can not be good at just one thing and have any certainty for the future. There is too much competition in single skill occupations, you can be in the top one percent of piano player in the world and be unemployed, no one remembers the fifteen fastest marathon runner and they are probably on minimum wage whilst the fastest has millions. However there is a way out by compounding skills, if you were a runner and also a great communicator, then you could have a full and satisfying career as a television commentator with little competition, that is compounding in action, taking two skills and combining them to create your own unique niche that no one else has or even thought of having.
As an example of how effective this compounding effect is, taking just forty thousands words and putting them together in three way gives you enough combinations to map out the entire world into a grid of three metre squares, that is almost 57 trillion squares, that is how powerful compounding is, and it is a world that opens up possibilities for you. It is in combining different skills, knowledge and life experience that you are able to create a life that no one else has, use your natural curiosity to explore different ideas, what is happening in your life right now, it will be a journey that is unique to you, and reflect on the interplay with what you already know to do, the skills you already have, they might not be unusual to you or the people around you, but that is not everyone in the world. You can travel to where you are unusual, a horse whisperer in Mongolia might be common but in Surrey it might be valuable especially if you then speak English, which is a combination of just two skills and a different location.
There is a world of possibilities once you start combining, and there is nothing wrong with having a mastery or pursuing excellence in one area but it should never be at the expense of closing down your curiosity. Whilst it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practise to gain mastery, it only takes a thousand to be gain competence, that is not an opportunity to be wasted, why only have one mastery when you could have that and ten competencies at the same time. It is both refreshing to spend an hour a day on a hobby, side hustle or interest, a physicist often find a clear head in a walk or sailing, Churchill loved to paint, Steve McQueen raced cars. Twenty minutes a day mediations becomes competence in ten years, an hour is just three years to the same goal, these are not distractions from mastery rather they feed the spirits of creativity.
We are after all, beings of growing consciousness, the important part being the growing, and the more growth you have, the better, though it should not be one dimensional. The famous Moore’s law said that processing power doubles every two year, but that was not forever, on an exponential curve that kind of growth happens for a long time though it in the end it always flattens out (infinite growth is impossible) at a certain stage it becomes more valuable to concentrate on other bottlenecks and the rewards for doing so increases. The same is true for your own life, find the bottlenecks in your own life, find where you can grow and the rewards will always be greater than the diminishing returns on being a little bit better at the thing you are already amazing at, if you are an economist who hates talking to people, become better at that. Life is limited so do not just play it safe, there are always better ways to add value to your life, we all have weaknesses and the rewards for finding them and getting better are always greater by compounding them with your current strengths.
It is only by constantly asking the questions of how can I grow today, what are my weaknesses and strength, what do I not know, where does my natural curiosity want to take me today, that you are able to create new ideas, find areas where you are able to grow and become a better person. When you stop looking, you stop growing and that bring the kind of sadness to the soul that is so destructive that some people never recover because it is so opposite to our nature as being of growing consciousness. It is not something you want to stop, get to the end of or retire from, it is the reason to get out of bed in the morning, it is the bounce in your step and the joy that enriches your life experience. There are no wrong questions, no blind alleyways to worry about going down, follow your growth and you will find out later how it compounds into a life worth living. No matter how much you re-forge your life, bash it about, melt it down and start again, you will find yourself stronger for the journey, a better and happier human being, that is the beauty of compounding, you are only ever adding to yourself, that is what will make you unique and the results might surprise you.
