In the last article, I show some examples that bring up points about why the amount of time a person has today is worth more than the same amount of time on a day in their future. Here, I bring up a point that was not mentioned there, that is in some ways larger than the other exemplified points. This is that usage of your time today can result in exponential gains building up day-by-day, and these gains can only start building when your activity begins on a project, representing your “point zero” on an exponential graph.
Everything Around You Grows Exponentially
I will start off by providing a graph that represent the exponential nature of the environment we find ourselves in.
A graph that has a steepening curve like this is very common to see when representing organic growth of an effort-based entity over time. This one shows the ranking of the top blogs on the internet by Technorati Authority, which is based on links to each site over the past 6 months. Although there are other factors involved, a key point about high-end achievers or sites like these is that they put in effort daily, with each day’s efforts building on the past days, accumulate further resources, and build up by strengthening what they already have.
This chart is one example that shows that rankings and settings around us are generally in a state where the gap between competitors increases as you head up the rankings. The top people and businesses are set apart by more ranking distance than lower-ranked individuals and entities. A large part of this ability to increase one’s distance ahead of others is the exponential or multiplicative gains that naturally show up after something has been started.
The Process
On day 1, there is very little to add to your efforts other than your starting effort.
On day 2, you have energy to produce yet again, but now have experience from Day 1, assistance from those you met on Day 1, and new ideas that you thought of on Day 1.
Assuming you continue in your efforts to a Day 3, you now have another chance to produce, using the experience from both Day 1 and 2. You also may now have a customer or supporter that assists in your project as well, or even obtains new customers or supporters. This phenomenon is a big contributor to the multiplicative gains that one sees once a project is begun and maintained.
It Has To Start From A Point Zero
A key point to take from this is that the gains only start when you have a day 1 or beginning point to your growth graph. Without a beginning point of action, the exponential gains remain in your head, as opposed to in the public eye. Saving your efforts for a later day doesn’t allow your exponential gains to start blooming. If you don’t start something soon enough, you might not get far enough into the gains that result before you quit, so there is limited time for you to take advantage of the potential multiplicative gains that can show up.
A closing item to keep in your mindset about this phenomenon is that effort put out today for one project is worth slightly more than the same amount put out tomorrow for that same project. It can even be the case that two hours of effort today could be worth more than three hours of effort on the same task tomorrow.
As an added resource, here is a link to an interesting PDF article called “The Exponential Society“.
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