Posted by Compounding interest is a phenomenon in finance that can lead to increased wealth, or it can lead to increased debt, depending on how you use your money. I believe that this phenomenon can also apply to self motivation. In other words, compounding motivation.
First, let’s look at how compounding interest works. When you incur debt, you have interest you must pay on the money you owe. When you don’t pay your debt the amount you owe increases because the interest charged on the amount you owe increases the total amount of money that you owe. This in turn increases the amount of interest you must pay the next time interest is added to the amount you owe. You are ultimately losing more money by not paying your debt because the amount you owe grows over time. This is negative compounding interest.
When you save money, you get paid interest on the money you have saved. If you put the amount paid in interest into your savings, the amount you have saved increases, which in turn increases the amount of interest you get paid. Over time this leads to increased wealth because the amount of money you have saved increases and thus the amount of interest paid to you increases as well. This is positive compounding interest.
What about motivation? I believe that motivation can be compounded as well, both negatively and positively.
What does negative compounding motivation look like? Think about procrastination. The first time you avoid doing something you lacked the motivation to take action. For example, lets say you avoid updating your budget with your recent purchases. This leaves you with a stack of receipts that you need to process. Over time if you continue to procrastinate the number of receipts you need to add to your budget increases. It becomes harder and harder to motivate yourself to work on these receipts because the job gets larger and larger as more receipts get added to the pile of receipts you must process. Your lack of motivation is increasing, which is negative compounding motivation.
What about positive compounding motivation? When you complete a goal or accomplish a task you feel good about yourself and your self confidence increases. This in turns increases your motivation to complete more goals and accomplish more tasks. Completing more goals and accomplishing more tasks will again boost your self confidence and motivation, so over time your motivation and self confidence will increase.
For example, consider the task of giving a speech. The very first time you have to give a speech it will be intimidating. The fear of public speaking prevents many people from ever giving a speech. Your motivation to give a speech will be low because of this fear, but if you get up and give a speech anyway you will find that it was not as bad as your feared. After giving a speech the first time, you will find it easier to give a second speech. The confidence you gained from completing your first speech will increase your motivation to do another speech. Over time your motivation to give speeches will increase and you may even come to enjoy giving speeches. This is compounding motivation in action.
I encourage you to put the phenomenon of compounding motivation to work in your life. Instead of procrastinating and increasing your lack of motivation, take action and complete your goals and tasks. As you complete your goals and tasks your self confidence and motivation will increase. Keep on completing goals and tasks and your motivation will compound over time. The more motivation you have, the easier it will be to accomplish your most important goals and tasks.
Remember that actively working on and achieving goals creates positive results and builds an ever increasing supply of self-confidence and motivation. This is the power of compounding motivation.