"How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly," Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises. Two words I took from that short character exchange are these: gradually, then suddenly.
Almost all meaningful progress (the opposite is true) in all areas of life follows the same curve.
It compounds.
Compounding is the only practical shortcut in life. It's strange, though. Because almost all the time, it feels like nothing is happening.
Most people misunderstand this principle in writing, investing, skill stacking, relationships and in their personal transformation. They overestimate what they can achieve in a year. And underestimate what they can do in a decade. You write every day for six months. Your first posts get three claps. You're tempted to quit. You feel like it's not working. But you keep going. You're not even sure why. You have hope. If you hang in there, people will keep sharing your pieces. And even message you about how your thoughts are helping them.
What changed?
Nothing in that one week. Everything in those months. Your work was doing its work the whole time. You just couldn't see it.
Physicist Albert Bartlett wisely said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
We're pattern-recognition brains built for linear outcomes. If something grows 10% a day, we expect tomorrow to be 10% bigger than today. We want 200x bigger now. We look at our writing, our savings, our skills and convince ourselves, "At this rate, I'll never get there."
We calculate linearly.
And quit rationally.
But the uncomfortable reality is that nothing changes.
Until everything does.
Compounding takes time.
Here's an investing example for visual sense. Put away $200 a month starting at 25. At 30, you've got maybe $15,000. Doesn't feel like much. At 35, $40,000. Better, but still just decent savings. At 40, $80,000. At 50, it's $200,000. At 60 is over $500,000. The last decade does more work than the first three combined. Same deposits. Different outcomes. That's the exponential function playing out in practical life. Of course, investing is not always linear. It could be a lot better or worse. If you leave it alone, it will do its work. "The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily," Charlie Munger said.
I like what Warren Buffett once said of his investment secret:
"Our favorite holding period is forever. We are just the opposite of those who hurry to sell and book profits when companies perform well but who tenaciously hang on to businesses that disappoint. Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds."
"Gradually, then suddenly," is also how we all learned to read.
You probably don't remember. But there was a long stretch where letters were just weird shapes. Then shapes became sounds. Sounds became words. Words became sentences. And one day (you don't know which day), reading became automatic. Your brain rewired itself so completely that now you can't not read.
You can't turn it off.
That's the principle of the exponential curve.
Flat, flat, flat, flat… then vertical.
Most people live on the flat part and assume that's all there is. They see results by other people, and immediately compare. They don't see the three years of the "flat" process. They see the IPO, not the decade in a garage. They see the Black belt, not the white belt, who kept doing hard things when everyone else quit.
A bamboo spends years growing roots, then shoots up over 90 feet in just six weeks. You're staring at the dirt, wondering why there's no tree yet. Something is happening. You just can't see it yet.
The good news is compounding applies to almost everything.
Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. But it's bigger than finance. "He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it," he said. Skills compound. The first coding tutorial makes no sense. The tenth will be better than the first one. At the hundredth time, you're building things. Each concept builds on the last. You can't skip steps, but you also can't see the step you're currently on leading to anything.
Until it does.
The same principle works for better health. A year of better choices changes your entire being. You will feel nothing at first. Then suddenly, energy is different. Your entire trajectory is transformed.
There's always a gap.
Between when you start and when it the vertical curve makes sense. I wrote for two years before anyone cared. I'm not special. That's just how long the gap lasted for me. For you, it might be six months or three years. The gap doesn't care about your timeline or your hopes. It just is. The gap is where most dreams go to die. It's where you're doing the work but seeing no results. Where you question everything.
Where quitting makes perfect sense.
But the thing about the gap is that you're not doing nothing. You're loading the spring. You're filling the reservoir. You're laying pipe underground that nobody sees, but that will carry water for decades. The gap is not wasted time. It's compressed time. It's the caterpillar in the cocoon, which looks like nothing is happening, but everything is. Compound growth isn't rational. It's patient. It works in the dark while you're sleeping, while you're doubting, while you're wondering if any of this matters.
The opposite is also true.
Ignore your bad habits or the behaviours that don't serve you for too long. And the results will shock you. It's probably nothing right now. Ignore them all for years, and you are in trouble. Debt, resentment and habits compound. Cutting corners compounds. The same invisible accumulation that builds you up can sabotage your entire life over time.
Nothing changes.
Until everything does.
The slide into bankruptcy isn't one bad decision. It's a hundred small ones that seemed fine at the time. The end of a marriage isn't one fight. It's a thousand experiences of not listening, not trying, not caring, each one barely noticeable, adding up to something unbridgeable.
Hemingway knew it goes both ways: gradually, then suddenly.
You can't see compounding while it's happening. That's how it works. If you could see your muscle fibres repairing themselves, your neural pathways rewiring, your skills getting better. Maybe it would be easier. But you can't. So you need faith. Not religious faith. Just practical faith. "If I keep watering this seed, even though I see only dirt, eventually something will break through." That's what I tell myself. You need systems, not goals. Goals are the tree. Systems are the watering. Saying "I want to be a writer" is a goal. Writing 300 words every morning is a system.
One depends on a future outcome you can't control.
The other is a present action you can repeat.
You need the patience of a kind that feels almost stupid. The patience to do something forty times that hasn't worked yet because you trust it will work the forty-first. Or the sixtieth. Or the hundredth. And maybe most importantly: you need to divorce your daily actions from daily results. Did your health routine today make you fit? No. But you make the deposit. Your writing may not go viral right now. But you improved your thinking in the process. That difficult conversation will not fix your relationship. But it will stop the compounding effect of silence.
The results are lagging indicators.
Your actions are leading ones.
You won't know when the curve bends. But the tipping point tips. The plateau ends. Suddenly, your skills take off. Your body responds differently. Suddenly, people are reaching out to you as the expert. After years of trying. And everyone will say you got lucky. They'll say you're a natural. They'll ask for your secret. But the secret is embarrassingly simple: you didn't stop during the flat part. You kept watering the dirt when there was no green. You trusted the process when it gave you nothing to trust.
You understood, even when it made no sense, that nothing changes.
Until everything does.
Wherever you are in your curve. Early in the flat part or way into the gap, just before the bend, the work is the same: keep going. Trust the math. You've seen this pattern enough times in enough areas to know it's happening, even when it's invisible. Water the seed. Make the deposit. Write the sentence. Have the conversation. Practice your routine. One day, maybe next month OR next year, you'll look back and realise: everything changed. And you won't be able to point to the exact time.
But it happened gradually.
Then suddenly.