How Small Gains Add Up to Epic Success Over Time

The greatest barrier to success in any facet of life is the lack of getting started.  Often times we see the end goal as the only goal. When the end goal seems difficult or impossible to achieve quickly, we simply avoid starting down that path.  This is true of money, skills, knowledge, relationships; projects big and small. Why do we do this?  How can we change our habits to achieve success?

“The greatest barrier to success in any facet of life is the lack of getting started.”

-Frugal Fill

Notice I didn’t say we could change our habits to avoid failure.  Failure is inevitable. That’s one of the keys of learning.  You’ve heard people say they’ve “learned from their mistakes” a thousand times. Guarantee they’re still making mistakes too, no one is perfect.  These mistakes can also cause major setbacks.  The bigger the mistake, or the bigger the setback rather, the less likely you’ll be to allow it to happen again.

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Money

Ask any financially successful person when they started investing. Then ask them when they wish they had started investing.  Their second answer will never be a later date than the first. They’ll always say they wished they would have started investing earlier.  The single most important tip to gain wealth through investing is to start as early as possible.

What if the market is at it’s peak? You don’t want to buy high and sell low. The key is that you’re buying now and selling later.  As in much later, like 20+ years later, or never. Let’s look at the S&P 500 index for example.

Index Fund Investing

A quick refresher on what the S&P 500 is if you don’t recall; it’s a stock market index tracking 500 large companies, weighted by each company’s total market value.  Simply stated, it’s a way to own Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla and 495 of their best friends and enemies without buying all 500 individual stocks.

The benefit of any index fund is that there are some winners and some losers in the batch. But overall, on any 20 year investment period there has NEVER been a loss in the S&P 500, and actually some quite handsome gains. (Past performance is not a guarantee of future gains, this is not financial advice.)

Here’s a great plot of the S&P 500 performance over the past 90 years. Adjusted for inflation, linear scale. The vertical grey bands are times of “recession.” Somehow including the current all-time highs… Yes there are dips and long periods of rather flat value. But if you bought at any of the peaks, 20 years later it would still be higher value. Even better if you invested consistently and bought some of the valleys too!

Macrotrends

You also aren’t selling it when you retire.  When you have your large chunk of money invested (find your FIRE number) your goal is to ideally live off the gains and not need to touch the principal. You may never need to sell any shares of anything.

Invest Early and Often

So if you’re buying into the S& P500 now (as of the writing of this post), you’re most certainly buying in at the top but where will it be in 20 years? The saying goes “its not timing the market, it’s time in the market”. Start early and invest often. You’ll harness the power of compounding interest. What might not seem like large gains at first, aren’t.

Small consistent gains over time will slowly but surely add up to financial success. Whether investing in the stock market, a small business, side hustle, or yourself. Start tracking your budget and net worth today!

Skills

The same “small gains over time” strategy holds true for physical skills.

A newborn baby is like a wet noodle mixed with a sack of potatoes. Completely dependent for almost all meaningful movement. They can’t even hold their own heads up. Then they slowly gain enough strength to roll over, sit up, crawl, and take their first steps.  These first steps aren’t graceful and are followed immediately by a fall. The baby tries and fails over and over again. Eventually they jump, swim, and run! Olympic sprinters weren’t born able to run. They probably weren’t even fast runners for many years.

I can’t bench press 500lbs, I also don’t care to. If I really wanted to set that goal, I would start by lifting what I can lift today. I won’t get to the end goal by trying to lift 500lbs continuously. I’d get discouraged by the lack of progress and most likely quit.  But if I start with just the bar at only 45lbs today and slowly add more weight over time I’ll see gains.  I’d be inspired to keep pushing and gaining, and I’ll reach my goal eventually.

People Doing Amazing Things

Think about the spammy videos that pop up on social media with the people in manufacturing jobs completing the same mundane task repeatedly at a blazing speed. The mason tossing the bricks and mortar from the ground up to the brick layer building a wall at a rate of one brick per second.  These people didn’t just wake up one day and start doing these amazing feats on a whim.  They started slow, they made mistakes, they practiced.  They became capable of being featured in a time-waster video to put us into a state of awe only after some period of growth and learning.

Knowledge

Knowledge is the next most common place you may stumble on getting started with small gains.  This one is highly subjective, since being the smartest person in the room has a lot of ego involved. You can easily become discouraged.

If the topic of discussion in the room is how to complete a spinal fusion, the only way I’d be the most knowledgeable is if the room was full of first graders. Even then it’s possible there’s a first grader out there that could enlighten me.

If the topic of discussion in the room is which lower control arm bushing to install in your 4^th generation 4Runner for overlanding travel, I’d have a lot to contribute.  This is regardless of who the audience is. Ten years ago though, I didn’t know anything about 4Runners. I started somewhere, and that was at zero.

The point is, it’s okay to not be the smartest person in the room. It’s actually an opportunity for you to leech some valuable knowledge off the expert(s).  Similar to the Olympic runner example above, the nuclear physicist wasn’t born knowing everything there is to know about…what ever it is they know about.

Start Somewhere

You have to start from wherever you are today, whether that’s being mildly knowledgeable or at square one. Learning how to learn is more important than the subject matter, at first. It’s unfortunate that we don’t use this as a metric in our school systems and instead focus on standardized content memorization. Once you master the ability to learn, simply apply it to any subject. Then all it takes is time to become an expert.

“Learning how to learn is more important than the subject matter, at first”

-Frugal fill

Self-starting interest in a subject is the best spark to get initiated on gaining knowledge. Some people naturally have this interest about everything and it’s easy for them to pick up a new intellectual hobby. Others could simply care less about gaining knowledge on a particular topic.  Some topics are inherently less interesting than others too. Or even taboo like money! Here’s some of my favorite resources to get you started on personal finance self-education.

A manager once told me “You cannot educate someone that doesn’t want to be educated.” There’s some psychology involved here too, but you must first want to learn (or need to), then commit the time to do it. Finally, you must stick with it! Yes, even if it’s difficult to understand or confusing at times with setbacks.

Relationships

Interaction with people, not surprisingly, also follows this same rule of small gains over time leading to success.  Sure there are plenty of outliers from my examples because people are so varying in personality. Generalizing though, these should sound familiar.

We all know the summer fling where boy meets girl and they spend every moment together.  You see them awkwardly waddling along in the “choke walk” because just holding hands isn’t enough. They insist on remaining intertwined, arms around necks.  Legs in stride, plastered together from hip to heel.

How does this story end?  They get bored, they want their freedom back. They can’t weather even the smallest of changes outside of their two person bubble.  There weren’t any small-gains-over-time to build up the relationship skills for challenges like that. Just 100% all-in with the expectation that it’s forever, until it’s not.

In contrast, the most successful relationships are built on communication. This includes the disagreements, compromise, and conflict resolution.  Communication is very iterative.  Each interaction builds upon itself side by side with trust over time.

We all know the batty old couple that’s always getting a rise out of the other partner. They’ve mastered their relationship. Only bettered with age like a fine wine. There’s no contest that they can weather life’s challenges together now that they’ve proven it. I assure you there were some touch and go moments over the years though.

Small Gains Over Time

No matter what area of your life you’re trying to improve, you can utilize the same simple strategy. Do you want to be rich? Are you happy with your fitness level and health? Can you sharpen your intellect? Do you find your relationships to be satisfying and fulfilling? You hold the key to all these areas of your life. If you have some room to improve then just get started. Small gains will always add up to epic success over time.