Ask HN: What are some examples of exponential work?

2 points·catsarebetter··5 comments

PGs last post mentioned that exponential work is non obvious, such as building an audience. What are some other examples of exponential work?

Investing and compound interest is one.

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Social circle. Many poorer people are trapped with a toxic employer, bad environment, and no room or motivation to improve. You're just much more likely to have an abusive, alcoholic father or spouse, and then trapped in that cycle. You're more likely to have an abusive manager or deal with disrespecting customers.

Middle class people like on HN also get focused on making enough to retire, even though economy of scale favors making abundant amounts of money. So they get trapped in a cycle of just doing enough and making enough, when it's easier to say, be the best in a field.

Social circle is linked to education and jobs, but you need to have good grades to get a good education, and you need to do well at work to get a good job.

Ah ok I was a little confused with the wording, but who you keep around you has long-term compounding effects. I like this one bc it's so so tru

Having children.

Could you explain a bit more? I don't have kids so I'm interested to learn more.

Kids lead to grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on. Exponential. You don’t need to have kids to understand that. I’m not sure what you don’t understand.

Anecdotally the work required to successfully raise children to adulthood seems to increase exponentially as well, but I only had the increasing numbers of descendants in mind when I first replied.

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