On Wednesday my Korean student told me that she learned a few new words from her daughter each day. I told her about the accumulation effect of this. "Keep doing it and get ready to see its surprising result over time."
The day after that I visited my doctor and later read about another accumulation in our bodies, cholesterol; and a simple formula of your average heart attack = high cholesterol * time.
When I was working on our tax returns yesterday, I saw the third accumulation in life, that is the compounding effect of wealth.
Be it learning or our bodies or our wealth or the way you do things, it all starts with something insignificant, insufficiently appreciated, and even ignored. Yet given time, they will all build up to something exceeding our initial imagination. The rule applies to almost everything in life.
The compound effect aligns best with the Chinese saying "积少成多" (jī shǎo chéng duō), which means an accumulation of small amounts can make a large quantity over time. The emphasis is on consistently making the same efforts, no matter how small they are.
At the beginning of Chinese lunar year, hopefully this short piece will serve as a reminder of the potential power of incremental progress or retrogression of small steps in life, whatever we do or we eat, when taken consistently, can eventually lead to something substantial. Make it something awesomely great in this Year of Dragon!