[Career] Three decades of stagnated careers?

All profound things in life compound including careers.

It is a well known phenomenon that time is the biggest lever for compounding. If that is the case then why all careers are not compounded by the time of retirement? It is strange that necessary time is put in and yet there are no results unlike the financial world. If that is the case, then why only a minuscule percentage of career compounding is seen?

This question made me think long and hard about career compounding 🧐 Digging deeper, I found an insight that answered the question of careers not compounding despite spending one billion seconds (30 years) on it.

Three reasons why careers typically do not compound despite the time spent on it.

1. We don't allow the compounding to happen. We keep breaking the curve every now and then by shifting focus and wavering in a career time line.
2. We stagnate in a role without much growth and learning. The math of 20 years is one thing done 20 times and not 20 different things done in 20 years progressively.
3. We accidentally wing our careers and typically there is no intentionality in making the compounding work.

It is interesting to note how we don't understand the exponential functions despite the priority and importance of careers in our lives.

If you want to compound your careers intentionally from today, how will you do it differently?

🥂 to compounding!