PNTV - The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to a new episode of Philosopher's Notes. Tv. Today we've got another good one. I know I say that every time. I love these books. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Darren Hardy is the publisher of Success magazine. He knows a thing or 10 about success. He's interviewed everyone and he's achieved an extraordinary amount of success in his life. And just a fun guy. This book is a little manifesto on how to jumpstart your income, your life and your success. It's a really quick, fun read. Super practical and inspiring Goodness. The six fundamentals of rocking it. Essentially. We've got the Philosopher's Notebook. I've got a bunch of big ideas in here. We'll cover a handful of them. Right now. Let's jump straight in. Let's talk about what the compound effect is as we discuss magic pennies. So you've probably heard the story of magic pennies of pennies compounding. But let's play the game. So I offer you a choice. You can take three. $3 million right now. Give you 3 million bucks right now, or I'll give you a penny and we'll double it every single day for 31 days. Which would you like? Would you like the 3 million bucks, $3 million right now in your hand, in your bank, or would you like a penny today that will double for 31 days? Insert Jeopardy music here. Which one do you pick? Well, let's say you take the 3 million bucks and your friend decides to take the doubling penny. What would that look like? Alright, so you get the 3 million bucks. You're stoked, your friend gets the penny. He's like, okay, I kind of hope this works out, right? That penny on day 10, how much is it worth? It's worth about five bucks. Day 10, five bucks. Not a lot, huh? You're feeling pretty good with 3 million bucks, right? This guy's starting to wonder. Day 20, where's he at? Your friend has $5,000 to your $3 million at day 20 is pretty far in the process. But then you keep on going. You get today's 28, 29, 30, 31, and suddenly the doubling penny is now worth over 10 million bucks to your $3 million. That's the compound effect. It's the magic of staying with something. As Darren describes it, it's small smart choices consistently applied over time equals huge results. Small smart choices consistently applied over time equals huge results. That's the compound effect that's magic pennies. He has a great story, too, that I'll go into quickly about three friends. Three friends. They're all exactly the same, basically, right? The first one keeps on living his life. He's kind of sort of happy, complains a little bit, but whatever, just keeps on doing the same thing. The second one says, you know what? I want to enjoy life more. I've been working hard. I'm going to get a big screen tv, going to watch the food channel, I'm going to make some nicer meals for myself and my family, and I'm going to get a bar installed, and I'm going to drink one exotic drink more a week. Nothing huge, but makes those changes and he wants to live a little more. The third friend says, Look, I heard Dr. Oz say that if I take 125 calories out of my diet, I can make significant changes over the long run. So I'm going to eat 125 calories less every day. One less cup of cereal, one less, whatever. 125 calories less, and I'm going to walk a couple thousand more steps a day. Not a big deal, less than a mile. I'm going to make these small changes. Number three makes positive, small changes. Number two makes negative. Small changes in number. The first guy doesn't change anything, right? Fast forward 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days. They're all pretty much the same, just like the pennies. But then you go forward 31 months, kind of like the 31 days for the pennies. And what do you have? Well, if you add 125 calories to your diet for 31 months, you just put on over 30 pounds. That's what happened to friend number two. Friend number three did the opposite. He lost 30 pounds. So in 31 months, these little changes wound up being huge. Friend three weighs 60 pounds less than then friend two. He lost 30 pounds. His buddy put on 30 pounds. That's how different they are. And then Darren talks about it wasn't just their physical health which was significant. Other positive ripples started happening. The positive guy said, hey, you know, I'm kind of feeling good. I'm going to read a little bit more. Ten minutes in the morning, and he started getting more and more positive. And he got a promotion at work and started making more money, and his relationship improved. Small choices consistently applied over time led to huge results. The negative spiral went for the other guy, the second guy, right? He had the little negative habits. He started feeling a Little tired from eating so much food and became a little crankier at work and at home. And his life went negatively down. Small choices consistently applied over time, huge results. That's the compound effect. That's the magic pennies. Big idea number two, unsexy, mundane fairy tales. So Darren says, look, 10 million bucks in that doubling penny. That's a fairy tale ending. But the way you get there is not sexy. It's mundane. It's often difficult application of daily disciplines. What are the things you need to do on a daily basis to create that fairytale ending? They're not often easy. They're certainly not incredibly fun. But what do you need to do? It's a lot more fun for me to stay online at night and go to espn.com, check out what's going on, maybe watch different things on my iPhone. Just a couple of quick little episodes of Colbert or whatever. That's a lot more fun than it was in the beginning anyway. Now it's actually more fun to do what I do. To turn off the phone, to be present with the family, to do a digital sunset is what we call it. And to go to bed by 7pm that's what I try to do during the winter right now. It's super fun for me now. But it's mundane. It's unsexy, but it's what we need to do if we want to achieve the fairy tale ending. So what are your daily disciplines that may not be particularly sexy, but you need to engage in more consistently? Think about that and get on it. When you do that, you will say, hello, Mr. Mo. So Darren has some great stories about Mr. Mo Momentum and what happens when you consistently apply these daily disciplines and experience. The compound effect is that you have this momentum that comes into your life. And all great performers are very good friends with Mr. Mo, Darren tells us, and he likens it to the space shuttle. The space shuttle, you may know, uses more fuel in the first few minutes of the trip than it does the entire rest of the trip. It's amazing. Why is that? Because it needs to escape gravitational pull. Well, so do we when we're creating new habits, when we're committing to creating a better life. It's the rocket launch phase of a space shuttle mission. Takes a ton of energy. It's hard work to rewire our brains and to actually create new habits. Right. But then what happens? Then Mr. Mo comes on, and all of a sudden, when the space shuttle is out there past gravitational pull, it just needs to make a subtle change. Not a lot of Energy and it gets dramatic results. Right. Mr. Mo comes. So you want to stay with it long enough to get Mr. Mo and then stay with it long enough to keep Mr. Mr. Moe in town. It's a big idea. One way to do that is to bookend your day. This is a really cool idea. It's something that I've done, but I hadn't articulated. I've never heard anyone articulate it the way that Darren does, and it's genius. So he says this. It's a lot easier to control your mornings and your evenings than it is in between. I call them AM rituals and PM rituals. And he says you need to bookend. Bookend your days with goodness. Start your day in a way that you can consistently rock it and end your day in a way you can consistently rock it. Bookend your days. Then your day might get a little chaotic in between, but you know you did the most important stuff at the beginning, at the end of the night. In the note, I talk about my AM rituals and PM rituals. Darren has some awesome ones. And we want to identify what we do when we're on and do that. Consistently. Bookend your days, AM rituals, PM rituals. Good stuff. Final big idea, the next five years. Darren has a great question. He says, look, if you could rewind to five years ago, five years ago, and imagine what you hoped your life would be like today, how you doing? Is your life today what you hope it would be five years ago in every aspect. Your health, your relationships, your creativity, your career, your finances, etc. It doesn't need to be a depressing exercise if it's not. But we do want to take the time to see that. Which areas of our lives are rocking. None of us are going to do that perfectly. Which areas are doing pretty darn well. We're pretty excited about it. And five years ago we would have been stoked to see where we are today. Then other areas we need to shine some more light on, we need to bring some more attention to it and think about how we put in the effort. The unsexy, mundane stuff that will lead to a fairy tale in five years, such that when we look back five years from now at today and who we aspire to be, we've engaged in our daily disciplines and other things that allow us to experience the benefits of those magic pennies, the compound effect at work. So think about that. Think about what behaviors you need to change in your life today such that the version of you five years from now. Thanks, you says. Thank you so much for doing that. That and that to give me the chance to have the life that I have now. It's a really cool idea. Let's make the next five years ridiculously awesome by embracing these ideas. So that's a quick look at Darren Hardy's great book, the Compound Effect. Check him out at darrenhardy.com, check out Success Magazine, all this other good stuff. He's got a new book coming out soon. I can't wait to read. There we go. We looked at Magic Pennies and the three friends who made small choices consistently applied over time to experience huge differences and huge results. The fact that fairy tales come from the mundane, the unsexy, the often challenging Daily Disciplines hello Mr. Mo, a space shuttle uses most of its energy in the launch phase. So do we when we start new habits. Bookender Days, AM rituals, PM rituals. What can you do to rock it? To set yourself up to have great days in your next five years? What are you going to change in your life today such that five years from now you're looking back and thanking yourself? Hopefully you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. 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