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The past two months have led to innumeranle changes, from graduation, to a new house, new car, and even having the climbing gym on the move. I have been thinking about exponents and how I can continue my exponential development through this stage.

I find that setting my goals obscenely high seems to help, provided that I recognize and understand fully that it is 100% impossible to achieve them, but I might as well try anyways! So for an easily quatifiable example, if I want to double the amount of money I make over the next few years (already a lofty goal), then I should shoot for quadrupling the amount, and even if I make it halfway to that goal, then I'm still doing alright (this is with the understanding in the beginning that if the goal isn't achieved at all, then there's really nothing lost anyway. The least I can say is I tried).

So I did the math in that context, and if I double my income every year for the next 10 years, I can retire quite comfortably (~10k per week). If I shoot for quadrupling my income, then the time drops to ~5 years.

My assumptions for this are that I will live to 100, I will not live above my needs during my compounding period, my compounded income will be a steady growth, and that my saved income will not beat inflation.

In the graph, it's easy to see that it really doesn't matter how much you start with - even if I were making minimum wage (part time at $7.25/hr in the 10% tax bracket) as someone just entering the workforce (15 years old), it would still take only 13 years to retire.

That brings up some questions, how the heck do we do that? Is it even possible to double or quadruple an income every year while maintaining sanity? Is it worth it? Is it even possible at all? And I think this idea, in my point of view, is a more coherent visualizion of the campfire. So I certainly think it is possible to achieve such growth so quickly, provided that intense concentration, patience, and discipline is followed; however, that doesn't answer whether it's worth the trouble.

I believe there are some conditions that need to be met before being able to take on such a task including the attitude as above, additionally being able to roll with the punches, and maintaining focus on your core values while having to set them aside until having time to pursue them (that is the goal after all, to remove money as an obstacle to your dreams - this is a means, not an end), and finally having the mental, emotional and spiritual strength to weather the challenges that will be thrown from all fronts. Learning new skills, having a healthy family and friendships, and avoiding addiction and depression are all vital for a successful life.

That leaves the last question, how can it be done? My approach, and this is be different for everyone, but I find that like a transmission or bicycle, different gears yield different results. It's best to start on a lower gear and move up. So each gear (or flammable object, in the campfire metaphor) for me is a different company I wish to start. For you, it may be a different person to interact with, or different position in a company, or generally different investment types to be made; I cannot determine that for you. For me, I started Roll and Go in my apartment with one of my highschool friends. That business ended up failing, but I learned a significant amount, and now I am working on Escarpment which I do not predict failing; I foresee hardships of course, but I believe this one is too big to fail as the last one had.

So the ball is rolling for me. As the hill gets steeper every year, the ball will move faster, and if i can reach my goal, it should be moving fast enough to carry me to my death.

That's simply for monetary growth. I've found I've stagnated with my German development, however my good friend from Malaysia has been learning it recently, and we hold many discussions in German, so it helps me immensely to keep sharp. He has been helping me as well by learning Chinese and guitar, so I can only hope to eventually merge my skills and create new things from what I know, continuously compounding my knowledge to help myself, and to record all that I know and do in order to help others.

Arbeit Macht Frei (work will set you free) was written above concentration camp gates in Germany. I think the scariest part of that staying is that it does have an ounce of truth in a properly ordered system. In such a system as ours, it should go: Work begets value; value begets money; money begets power; power begets freedom.