Compounding: The Most Powerful Force In The Universe?

Guest post.

Albert Einstein supposedly declared compound interest to be the most powerful force in the universe? He might or might not have said it, who knows. But there is something deep about this compound thing.

Compound interest (in finance) is, well, we'll just cite Wikipedia here:

the addition of interest to the principal sum of a loan or deposit, or in other words, interest on interest. It is the result of reinvesting interest, rather than paying it out, so that interest in the next period is then earned on the principal sum plus previously accumulated interest. Compound interest is standard in finance and economics.

The Compound Effect

There's a book called The Compound Effect by some dude. We checked out the book, because the compounding thing is partly interesting, and we've read tons of prais of the book. The book was not interesting. Most important lesson learned, was not to trust praise from a particular place, which we regarded as one of the few respectable forums on the internet. So we did learn that much. The book was terrible, luckily it was skimmed for free (library), and no pennies contributed to the author. A quick image search for the author would have been a tell-tell, but we went all in with no previous knowledge of the guy or the content.

This book is in the self help category. Horrible category. There are references, to a guy which we do not want to mention by name. First name rhymes with Phony. A leading self help figure, could be number one in the world. Poor soul. Horrible stuff. If you like this Phony guy, or anything remotely related, a simple heuristic: We're different, incompatible, and good bye. If you, like us, spot the fakeness and BS a mile away, then we at least have something in common.

Most BS self help books is contaminated with endless motivational speak and promotional self talk. Then comes the life changing "fantastic advice", making your life a fairy tale. Blah blah blah.

People actually like this stuff and that's funny, hilarious. It means you could easily sell crap to millions of people, and they will praise it. Smart people will find other ways to make money, like, you know, produce something of quality, do the right thing, ethical stuff, making the world better, by not getting involved in BS.

Success is the opposite of most self help gurus, their sleezytroll appearance, the goosygoo philosophy, their BS belief systems, their umpha-alpha hacks. Yes. It is all BS.

But good points? There are many things to agree with coming out of the self help industry. Just like there are many things you will agree with coming from ads, even the creepiest of advertising, even bad ideas can embed elements of truth and beauty.

Even a poop can contain traces of gold, actual gold that is. Yes, really. Gold is everywhere, sorta. But in tiny, tiny amounts. But, the main thing in your hand, say, is poop. You do not want to hold poop. Even if it has gold in it. And this is basically a summary of the whole self help genre. Poop with some gold.

You can do it too! There are no limits to what you can achieve in this life. Now that you know there are atomic particles of gold in poop, what are you waiting for! Live the dream. Poop is everywhere. It might not be easy, and you will have to work for it, but poop is everywhere. That's how most self help sounds to us. It's not always incorrect, but terribly stupid. And hilarious, people actually praise this crap.

Distorted View of Success

The image of success. Tons of cash (nothing intrinsically wrong with being rich), slick hairstyle, fast cars, beautiful women (superficial and stupid). Health and wealth. Knuvwledge. Empty words.

True success is mostly an intersect of the inverse image of the typical self help guru and the inverse stupid bandit (Cipolla style).

Self Help That Works

Keeping track of all the neat tricks and things to "help the self" is not easy.

Is there some good universal self help strategy that actually will work? Probably not, people are different, yet alike. The average human does not exist. There is no one-plan fits all for how to live a good life.

That said, this is how you might approach self help constructively.

First, read less self help litterature. Second, live more, live and learn. Get wiser. Less exposure to news, fake news and most news (most mainstream news is narrow narratives, sadly so little news these days is actual reporting of events, non-mainstream media is noisy and blurred too), less exposure to social media. Less is more, somtimes, mostly, and less of more is often a good rule.

What kind of self help material will actually help you?

Certainly not most self help books and material.

What to do?

A simple sheet of paper, one page, and on that page: Write the important stuff, the things that is important for you to remember, like the wonders of compound interest, just keywords or illustrations, things that is worth remembering, and getting a reminder once in a while. Every day, every week, more often or less often. Totally up to you. Then add stuff to this page. As you grow and get older and wiser, take a new, blank page, and transfer the golden bits to that new page. All you need is this one page. Not a library of shi*ty self help books from authors.

The thing with self help is to remember the good stuff, and review this stuff enough. A simple page will be enough, and give you the overview of the important stuff in life. You can review this page in a minute, or spend an evening glazing at the same page while thinking deeply about the items you've written. Or whatever. It's your page.

We are humans. We forget. We forget good ideas. Medicore ideas and noise get in the way, and it's hard to remember all the really good stuff. The truly brilliant things you read, hear, think, and stuff that really matters. Make your page, and add things to it. Re-do the page once you have outgrown the page. Better this way.

One final note, and you might have come to the same conclusion:

Avoid self help books, the self help industry.

The best inspiration and matierial to make life good is almost always something you find outside of the self help industry. If you truly are seeking to live a better life, achieve great things, do something great, be happy, live a rich life, earn a fortune, help the world, make the earth a better place, contribute, make life worth living, crap like that... well, guess what: The self help industry with all its promises will not be the place to find the information, inspiration, wisdom, whatever to make those things real. The self help industry is a dark place, move on.

Like, the worst thing to do if you are not happy, but want to get happy, is to read self help material on happoness. Wrong move! There is no single right answer, but whatever it is, seek beyond the dead-end and hopeless self help industry.