Everyone has some form of math lessons while in school- arithmetic, algebra, and stuff like that. But one thing that really stands out, and something that is probably much more interesting than how it appears at first is the concept of compounding. Apparently there’s a whole lot of terms you can use to define it in a financial sense, but in general the concept is applicable to a lot of things.

Having had some personal experiences (as we all have probably had at some points in our lives), I can vouch for its importance - especially with regards to doing something regularly. Not everyday chores, not everyday biological processes, but in a more “directed and targeted bunch of activities” sense - be it sports, music, literature, or whatever. Starting out with a running habit, running a modest 2 kilometres at a stretch, but doing it consistently slowly ends up becoming a bunch of half marathons over a few years (or months, or even decades; YMMV). Strumming the same chords over and over again on a guitar, even if for a few minutes but on a daily basis, transitions into full-length songs magically over the course of time (whether the final “songs” are good or not is immaterial - but that they happened in the first place is quite something).

But the key seems to be deliberate, periodic effort. Such effort compounds - and compounds fast. At the end of it all, nothing matters per se, because…there is no end of it all. Once the compounding process has begun, it’s forever - there are habits that may break once in a while, but what’s once kindled is probably going to last forever. Even broken habits can be restarted with a significant compound already in place from the previous attempt. The internet is maybe a good example of compounding - what started off as a small DARPA project ended up being the talk of everything around - and it seems to be going on and constantly evolving, with the content compounding. Stuff like IRC, Netflix, Google, this technology for blogging - everything is a product of compounding of proto-internet ideas.

And the current stage is just proto for something in the future, resulting from today’s elements compounding. For better or for worse.