You Quit in Month Two. Everyone Does

Career · Mindset

By Feras Asakrieh · 5 min read · Issue #42

Last Saturday morning I was sitting in my kitchen with my green tea, scrolling on my phone.

I was looking for a way to get more eyes on my LinkedIn posts. Some tool. Some trick. One of those lists of hooks that people swear will change everything. I had three tabs open. I was fifteen minutes deep.

Then I clicked over to my own analytics. Just to see where I was starting from.

1,452,216 impressions. Up 335 percent from the year before.

LinkedIn content performance, 1,452,216 impressions, up 335 percent versus the prior 365 days

I sat there and stared at it.

I was shopping for the thing I already had. I had been building it for a year, one post at a time, and I never noticed it happening.

I Went Looking For A Shortcut While Standing On The Result

Here is the part that got me. When I looked at the chart, there were two little jumps in it. Two posts that took off. Everything else was a slow, boring line going up and to the right.

Those two jumps are not what got me to 1.4 million. The boring line did.

Nobody screenshots a boring line. Nobody makes a video about a boring line. So we all chase the jumps and skip the only part that actually works.

Years ago I read a book called The Compound Effect. It changed how I look at almost everything. The idea is simple. Small actions repeated over time beat big actions done once. Everybody nods at that. Almost nobody lives like it is true.

Here Is What Those Posts Actually Bought Me

Executives I never would have gotten near started answering my messages.

Leads showed up in my inbox that I never chased.

I built a guide that people buy while I am asleep.

People walked into meetings already knowing who I was.

Companies reached out to me instead of me applying to them.

Now here is the part that matters. I cannot tell you which post did any of it.

Not one. I could not point at a single post and say that one changed my career. Because none of them did. All of them did.

That is the compound effect. There is no hero post. There is a pile. And you only get a pile by showing up on the days when nothing happens.

Why This Is So Hard To Believe

The problem is not effort. Ten minutes is not hard. One post is not hard.

The problem is that a small action gives you nothing back on the day you do it. No applause. No result. No proof. Your brain reads that as wasted, so it quits.

Here is what that sounds like in your head:

"This post got 40 views. What is the point."

"I will start once I have a real strategy."

"That person started after me and they are already way ahead."

"I missed a week. I will just restart in January."

"I do not have time for something this slow."

Every one of those sounds reasonable. Every one of those costs you a year.

Here Is How To Actually Start Compounding

1. Shrink it until it feels almost silly.

Most people pick something too big. An hour at the gym. Five posts a week. A full course after work. Then they miss two days and stop for good. Make it so small you have no excuse left. Ten minutes of walking a day. That is about a mile. That is roughly 350 miles in a year, done before you even open your laptop. Or pick one meal a day that you eat clean and leave the other two alone. One meal. Watch what that does to your weight over twelve months. At the start, the goal is not results. The goal is that you never miss.

2. Attach it to a day, not a mood.

"I will post when I have something good to say" is how it dies. Motivation is not a schedule. Pick the slot and let it be boring. Mine is a post every weekday and this newsletter every Saturday at 10am. It is not a decision anymore. It is just what happens on that day. Put it on your calendar like a meeting with your boss that you cannot move.

3. Count the days, not the results.

For the first 90 days, track one thing. Did I do it today. That is it. If you check your views, your weight, or your account balance every day, you will quit, because the number will barely move and you will decide you are failing. Keep a dumb little checklist on your fridge or your notes app. Your only job is to keep the row of checkmarks alive.

4. Protect it on your worst week.

Anybody can do the habit on a good week. The compounding actually happens on the week you are slammed, tired, traveling, and looking for permission to skip. That is the week that separates people. On those weeks, do the tiny version. A two minute walk. A three sentence post. One line to your spouse telling them you love them, and yes, that one compounds too. Do not go to zero. Zero is where the whole thing breaks.

5. Give it a year before you judge it.

My chart looked like nothing for the first two months. If I had graded it in November I would have quit and felt smart about it. Twelve months is the minimum honest test. Set a reminder a year out, then go do the work and stop looking at it.

Final Thoughts

People say the compound effect is slow. It is not slow. It is invisible.

Those are two very different things. Slow means you can watch it crawl. Invisible means you get no proof at all, right up until you get all of it at once.

The walk you take tomorrow will not show up tomorrow. Neither will the post. Neither will the deposit, or the clean meal, or the ten minutes on the floor with your kid.

They show up on some random Saturday morning a year from now, when you are hunting for a shortcut and you find out you already built the thing.

Pick one thing this week that is too small to fail. Then just do not stop.

P.S. That Saturday I went looking for a shortcut and found a year of small steps instead. If you want to figure out which small thing is worth repeating in your career for the next twelve months, let's map it out together. You can book a call with me here.

You Quit in Month Two. Everyone Does

Subscribe to the Newsletter