@build_in_public

This is still one of my favorite pieces of writing on the internet.

We underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day, you'll write a book a year. That's the key, consistency.

People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done rather than nothing. If you do work that compounds, you'll get exponential growth.

Most people who do this do it unconsciously, but it's worth stopping to think about.

Learning, for example, is an instance of this phenomenon. The more you learn about something, the easier it is to learn more. Growing an audience is another.

The more fans you have, the more new fans they will bring you. The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning. It isn't.

It's still a wonderful exponential curve. But we can't grasp that intuitively. So we underrate exponential growth in its early stages.

I love this line. Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it's worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. But since we underrate exponential growth early on, this, too, is mostly done unconsciously.

People push through the initial unrewarding phase of learning something new because they know from experience that learning new things always takes an initial push. Or they grow their audience one fan at a time because they have nothing better to do.

Here it is. If people consciously realized they could invest in exponential growth. Many more would do it.

That writing comes from Paul Graham. Paul Graham is a founder of Y Combinator, which many would call the greatest tech accelerator ever. He is a brilliant mind in tech and business.

If you want to read the whole thing, it's this article right here. How to do great work.