Compounded failure

Feb 28, 2024

It seems like we're not always winning.

Usually, smart people know that great days are very uncommon. They know that people most of the time suck and the best approach is not to look for incredible gains but rather small, compounded, improvements. However, we tend to think about the bad days the same as the average ones—“It was just a bad day”. Or worse, we don't think about bad days at all. We think in terms of compounded improvements, but never in compounded failure.

Reflecting on my own life, I've noticed that the majority of instances where things went wrong were, in fact, outcomes of compounded failure:

The most important thing I can say to my future me is to, please, think more about this compounded failure. It's almost always invisible. Yet, it's responsible for most of the things that I'm not proud of myself.