The Compound Effect Summary

Hey dear readers. I know many of you are looking for the summary of a great book “The Compound Effect.”

I want to share my copy-paste notes from the book. I highlighted the best parts that made sense to me and hope it will help you get through the book real quick.

Here we go:

The Compound Effect is based on a principle I’ve used in my own life and training; that is, your decisions shape your destiny. The future is what you make of it. Little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default. In fact, it’s the littlest decisions that shape our lives.

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

Understanding the Compound Effect will rid you of “insta-results” expectation — the belief success should be as fast as your fast food, your one-hour glasses, your thirty-minute photo processing, your overnight mail, your microwave eggs, your instant hot water and text messaging. Enough, okay? Promise yourself that you’re going to let go once and for all of your lottery-winner expectations because, let’s face it, you only hear stories about the one winner, not the millions of losers.

When you understand how the Compound Effect works, you won’t pine for quick fixes or silver bullets. Don’t try to fool yourself into believing that a mega-successful athlete didn’t live through regular bone-crushing drills and thousands of hours of practice. He got up early to practice — and kept practicing long after all others had stopped. He faced the sheer agony and frustration of the failure, loneliness, hard work, and disappointment it took to become №1. By the end of this book, or even before, 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, too, that the results, the life, and the lifestyle of your dreams can be yours when you put the Compound Effect to work for you. If you use the principles outlined in The Compound Effect, you will create your fairy-tale ending!

The Compound Effect is always working. You can choose to make it work for you, or you can ignore it and experience the negative effects of this powerful principle. It doesn’t matter where you are on this graph. Starting today, you can decide to make simple, positive changes and allow the Compound Effect to take you where you want to go.

We all come into this world the same: naked, scared, and ignorant. After that grand entrance, the life we end up with is simply an accumulation of all the choices we make. Our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away. Think about it. Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something.
Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices.

Every decision, no matter how slight, alters the trajectory of your life —

Every choice has an impact on the Compound Effect of your life.

For instance, have you ever been going about your business, enjoying your life, when all of sudden you made a stupid choice or series of small choices that ultimately sabotaged your hard work and momentum, all for no apparent reason? You didn’t intend to sabotage yourself, but by not thinking about your decisions — weighing the risks and potential outcomes — you found yourself facing unintended consequences.



Why are we sometimes feeling low on energy, although we eat good, exercise and sleep properly? Why is that?
You block the infinite energy by closing your heart. By closing your mind, and by pulling yourself into restrictive space inside. This closes you off from all the infinite energy. When you close your heart or close your mind, you hide in the darkness within you.”
You can train yourself to open every time you see a person. It’s just a question of weather you want to close or weather you want to open. It’s ultimately under your control.

Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you.

“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.” Whoa. This wasn’t what I was expecting! But I quickly understood how this concept could transform every area of my life. If I always took 100 percent responsibility for everything I experienced — completely owning all of my choices and all the ways I responded to whatever happened to me — I held the power. Everything was up to me. I was responsible for everything I did, didn’t do, or how I responded to what was done to me.

Preparation (personal growth) +

Attitude (belief/mindset) +

Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) +

Action (doing something about it) =

Luck

This is what separates the Richard Bransons from the Joseph Wallingtons. Joseph who? Exactly. You’ve never heard of him. That’s because he failed to take action on all the lucky things that happened to him.

My mentor Jim Rohn said, “The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life.” Today is graduation day! From this day forward, choose to be 100 percent responsible for your life. Eliminate all of your excuses. Embrace the fact that you are freed by your choices, as long as you assume personal responsibility for them. It’s time to make the choice to take control.

The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.

The Compound Effect

What’s simple to do is also simple not to do.
The magic is not in the complexity of the task; the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough.. The simple things are the ones that make the big things in our life possible.
it’s the littlest decisions that shape our lives.

It’s not the big things that add up in the end, it’s the power of little things adding up.

You may have heard about tracking before. In fact, you’ve probably done your own version of this exercise. But I also bet you aren’t doing it now, right? How do I know? Because your life isn’t working as successfully as you’d like. You’ve gotten derailed. Tracking is the way to get it back on track. Do you know how the casinos make so much money in Vegas? Because they track every table, every winner, every hour. Why do Olympic trainers get paid top dollar? Because they track every workout, every calorie, and every micronutrient for their athletes. All winners are trackers. Right now I want you to track your life with the same intention: to bring your goals within sight.

That’s the power of little things adding up. It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.

It’s about becoming a creature of champion habits. With enough practice and repetition, any behavior, good or bad, becomes automatic over time. That means that even though we developed most of our habits unconsciously (by modeling our parents, responding to environmental or cultural associations, or creating coping mechanisms), we can consciously decide to change them. It stands to reason that since you learned every habit you have, you can also unlearn the ones that aren’t serving you well. Ready? Here goes…

If your next puff of a cigarette instantly mutated your face into that of a weathered eighty-five-year-old, chances are you’d pass on that, too. If you failed to make that tenth call today and were immediately fired and bankrupted, suddenly picking up the phone would be a no-brainer. And, if that first forkful of cake instantly put fifty pounds on your frame, saying “no thank you” to dessert would be the true piece of cake.

The best illustration I can give you to emphasize the power of small adjustments is that of a plane traveling from Los Angeles to New York City. If the nose of the plane is pointed only 1 percent off course — almost an invisible adjustment when the plane’s sitting on the tarmac in Los Angeles — it will ultimately end up about 150 miles off course, arriving either upstate in Albany or in Dover, Delaware. Such is the case for your habits. A single poor habit, which doesn’t look like much in the moment, can ultimately lead you miles off course from the direction of your goals and the life you desire.

and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values. You’ve got to want something, and know why you want it, or you’ll end up giving up too easily. So, what is your why? You’ve got to have a reason if you want to make significant improvements to your life. And to make you want to make the necessary changes, your why must be something that is fantastically motivating — to you. You’ve got to want to get up and go, go, go, go, go — for years! So, what is it that moves you the most? Identifying your why is critical. What motivates you is the ignition to your passion, the source for your enthusiasm, and the fuel of your persistence.

“I have seen business moguls achieve their ultimate goals, but still live in frustration, worry, and fear. What’s preventing these successful people from being happy? The answer is they have focused only on achievement and not fulfillment. Extraordinary accomplishment does not guarantee extraordinary joy, happiness, love, and a sense of meaning. These two skill sets feed off each other, and makes me believe that success without fulfillment is failure.” Well said. That’s why it’s not enough to choose to be successful. You have to dig deeper than that to find your core motivation, to activate your superpower. Your why-power.

As I mentioned before, the Compound Effect is always working, and it will always take you somewhere. The question is, where? You can harness this relentless force and have it carry you to new heights. But you must know where you want to go. What goals, dreams, and destinations do you desire?

“If you are not making the progress that you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined.” One of Paul’s most memorable quotes reminds us of the importance of goals: “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon… must inevitably come to pass!” The one skill most responsible for the abundance in my life is learning how to effectively set and achieve goals. Something almost magical happens when you organize and focus your creative power on a well-defined target. I’ve seen this time and again: the highest achievers in the world have all succeeded because they mapped out their visions. The person who has a clear, compelling, and white-hot burning why will always defeat even the best of the best at doing the how.

You only see, experience, and get what you look for. If you don’t know what to look for, you certainly won’t get it. By our very nature, we are goal-seeking creatures. Our brain is always trying to align our outer world with what we’re seeing and expecting in our inner world. So, when you instruct your brain to look for the things you want, you will begin to see them. In fact, the object of your desire has probably always existed around you, but your mind and eyes weren’t open to “seeing” it.

“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.”

“What kind of a man would a woman like this be looking for? Who do I need to become to be attractive to a woman of this substance?”

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

There is a 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. What excites me about this reality, however, is that if change were easy, and everyone were doing it, it would be much more difficult for you and me to stand out and become an extraordinary success.

Ordinary is easy. Extra-ordinary is what will separate you from the crowd. Personally, I’m always happy when something is hard.

Law, also known as the Law of Inertia: Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something stops their momentum. Put another way, couch potatoes tend to stay couch potatoes. Achievers — people who get into a successful rhythm — continue busting their butts and end up achieving more and more.

I do three things: First, I think of all the things I’m grateful for. I know I need to attune my mind to abundance. The world looks, acts, and responds to you very differently when you start your day with a feeling and orientation of gratitude for that which you already have. Second, I do something that sounds a bit odd, but I send love to someone. The way to get love is to give it, and one thing I want more of is love. I give love by thinking of one person, anyone (it could be a friend, relative, co-worker, or someone I just met in the supermarket — it doesn’t matter), and then I send them love by imagining all that I wish and hope for them. Some would call this a blessing or a prayer; I call it a mental love letter. Third, I think about my №1 goal and decide which three things I’m going to do on this day to move closer toward reaching it.

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.

I’ve mentioned that if there’s one discipline that gives me a competitive advantage, it’s my ability to be consistent.

Consistency is the key to achieving and maintaining momentum.

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

out. Identify people who have positive qualities in the areas of life where you want to improve — people with the financial and business success you desire, the parenting skills you want, the relationships you yearn for, the lifestyle you love. And then spend more time with them. Join organizations and businesses and health clubs where these people gather and make friends. Ahead, you’ll see how I even used to drive to a different town to spend quality time — with fortuitous results.

Put other way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

Each and every incomplete thing in your life exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood. Every incomplete promise, commitment, and agreement saps your strength because it blocks your momentum and inhibits your ability to move forward. Incomplete tasks keep calling you back to the past to take care of them. So think about what you can complete today. Additionally, when you’re creating an environment to support your goals, remember that you get in life what you tolerate. Put other way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

Your mind starts inventing all sorts of convenient alibis on why it’s okay to stop. It is then when you’re faced with one of life’s greatest questions: Do you push through the pain and continue on, or will you crack like a walnut and give up?

When you’ve prepared, practiced, studied, and consistently put in the required effort, sooner or later you’ll be presented with your own moment of truth. In that moment, you will define who you are and who you are becoming. It is in those moments where growth and improvement live — when we either step forward or shrink back, when we climb to the top of the podium and seize the medal or we continue to applaud sullenly from the crowd for others’ victories.

“There is a point in every race when a rider encounters his real opponent and understands that it’s himself,”

When I do keynotes for large companies, I spend a considerable amount of time preparing — learning about their organization, products, markets, and their expectations for my talk. My goal is always to significantly surpass what they expect, and I do this through tireless preparation. Doing better than expected becomes a big part of your reputation. Your reputation for excellence multiplies your results in the marketplace many times over.

I challenge you to adopt these philosophies in your own life — in your daily habits, disciplines and routines. Giving a little more time, energy, or thought to your efforts won’t just improve your results; it will multiply them. It takes very little extra to be EXTRAordinary. In all areas of your life, look for the multiplier opportunities where you can go a little further, push yourself a little harder, last a little longer, prepare a little better, and deliver a little bit more. Where can you do better and more than expected? When can you do the totally unexpected? Find as many opportunities for “WOW,” and the level and speed of your accomplishments will astonish you… and everyone else around you.

I have one more valuable success principle to pass along to you. Whatever I want in life, I’ve found that the best way to get it is to focus my energy on giving to others. If I want to boost my confidence, I look for ways to help someone else feel more confident. If I want to feel more hopeful, positive, and inspired, I try to infuse that in someone else’s day. If I want more success for myself, the fastest way to get it is to go about helping someone else obtain it