In a world where we are all sharing the highlight reels of our lives via social media it is easy to find yourself feeling inadequate. You’ll find yourself asking “what am I doing with my life?” “Am I being left behind?” and “Could I be doing more?”

You then find yourself in a New Years resolution type frenzy, analysing what steps you can take to make your life as awesome as everyone else’s Facebook feed. You declare that you are going to go travelling, that you are going to work out EVERY day and that you are never going to eat a slice of cake ever again!

The truth is for most of us, trying to achieve any form of overnight change is folly. You’ll end up running out of willpower. We’re a society that celebrates “overnight successes” which unfortunately don’t exist. They have all come from playing the “long game” and you have to be in it too in order to achieve any of your goals.

If someone gave you £5 tomorrow you would hardly declare yourself wealthy. But then they do the same the next day and the next day and do so every day for the next 10 years of your life. Now that daily £5 is £18,250 all from just receiving £5 every day. That could pay a significant amount of that student loan you took out right?

The same can be applied to any scenario. Sure you can write to 100 publishers about your book in 2 days but do you have the willpower? Instead why not just write to 2 each day for 10 weeks and spend the rest of the time writing your next project. In 10 weeks you’ll have written to not 100 but 140 publishers without having come out of it feeling like you’ve done a marathon.

This is The Compound Effect and it relies on consistency rather than pure volume to move things forward. What small tasks could you do on a daily basis that would significantly move the needle forward? Feel free to leave your answer in the comments!