You’ve probably heard this before, but let’s say someone offered you a million dollars OR a penny that could double every day for a month. Which would you choose?
Most people would pick the million, and who could blame them? In a blink, their lives would go from grinding it out paycheck to paycheck to being on My Lottery Dream Home with David Bromstad!
But if you were curious enough to take that penny option, you’d eventually have over 5 times as much money! It’s true, a penny doubled every day ends up being worth $5,368,709.12 on day 30. If it happened to be a month with 31 days, you’d have just under ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS! Even February in a non-leap year would be worth more than that million.
Albert Einstein once made the observation that compounding interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He also said, “He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
My point isn’t to make you feel bad for not saving money, but to inspire you to dream about what is possible if you simply and consistently take small steps in the direction of your dreams.
[Tweet “It’s amazing what is possible if you simply and consistently take small steps in the direction of your dreams.”]This is day 90 of the year. That means I’ve written something for 90 straight days on my way to achieving my goal of writing every day during 2021. At the beginning of the year, I thought that maybe I could write 100 words a day and that would give me around 36,000 words at the end of the year.
I’ve already written 26,069. The kicker, though, is that it hasn’t felt like I’ve written that much because it’s been a little each day that has resulted in a lot. Consistency is the key, and when we use it, it unlocks the door that allows the 8th wonder of the world to work for us rather than against us.
Let’s circle back to that penny and the choice between it and a million dollars. The reason most people would take the million is that most people live “stop and start” lives. We wish we were in shape, and so we go from the couch to a 5k in a day and decide — after our near-death experience! — that running isn’t our thing. Until a year later when we feel even worse about our physical condition and decide to get in shape again (as if we were in shape before!). The cycle repeats and we never make progress.
But what if we’d just started simply with small, consistent steps from the couch to the 5k? Well, that’s what I did 13 years ago, and I haven’t looked back. (By the way, there’s a running plan called Couch to 5k that does exactly that. Check it out if you’re interested in getting started!)
Take the penny and do something with it every day. You’ll be surprised how far you’ll go when you decide that small steps consistently are more important than giant steps occasionally.
