📈 Compounding Effect
Good morning, friends! ☀️
I am writing this on Sunday, right after my end-of-season hockey dinner last night, so I am pretty bad for wear. It was a terrific evening, but I am looking forward to some time off before next season (I don’t know why I am saying this; I doubt many of you care!).
Recently, I have been feeling a bit down regarding my YouTube channel, as my growth has kind of plateaued in the last couple of months. My number is increasing, and I am very thankful for everyone's support, but the rate of increase is slowly dropping. One may say the derivative (gradient) is constant!
Now, I have written articles about how things like YouTube are infinite games and that it's all about journey over destination. While this is definitely true, and I frequently remind myself of this every day, emotions are not fully controllable.
However, and this is a big however, many things in life are a small burn in the early stages. I have only been on YouTube for about seven months and have 45 videos, so I shouldn't expect MASSIVE results. A promise I made to myself was that I was going to make 100 videos before re-evaluating, and I am not even halfway there!
I need to let the power of compounding do its thing.
As Einstein, apparently, famously said:
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world
A prime example, which I am sure you have heard, is the investor Warren Buffet. He started investing at age 11 and is now worth ~ $130 billion at 93. Despite investing at such a young age, 99% of his net worth came after age 50!
Things take a while to get off the ground, but when they are off, a snowball effect happens, and we start to experience exponential growth.
The tricky part is that we don’t know when this inflection point to exponential growth will occur. It can be days, months, or years, but chances are that it will happen at some point if you keep going with it.
Let me share a personal example that illustrates the power of compounding. After nearly 2.5 years of consistent posting, my blog had a following of 3.5k by the end of February. But then, one of my posts took off last month, and I gained 2.5k in just one month!
It took 2.5 years to get to that point, and it shows that being patient and letting the snowball do its thing is the way forward.
Weekly Favourites ❤️
🎬 YouTube — Easlo. I recently discovered this YouTube channel after improving my notion skills. Easlo has excellent advice on productivity, tech, and note-taking. I also love the black-and-white aesthetic they have going on.
📩 Newsletter — Data Ground Up. One of my friends from the data community,
, recently started a newsletter after running DSBoost for over a year. It's a terrific newsletter if you want to develop your data knowledge and career!✏️ Article — 30 Python Concepts I Wish I Knew Way Earlier. Despite coding in Python for ~4 years, I was amazed at what I still didn't know!
(PS: Some links are affiliate links that I get a kickback from with no extra cost to you 😎)
I definitely understand about feeling discouraged, just know your content has been very helpful for getting me out of a bit of a rut about where to go with data science! Also, cool that you play hockey; I find it interesting to hear about what people do outside of data science when they want to share :)
Very Inspiring and Insightful as well.
Please keep it up for youngsters like me.