Are You Moving the Needle Every Day?

Are you moving the needle every day?

That’s a question I’ve returned to again and again. It’s a simple idea that has shaped how I think about progress, time, and results—largely thanks to Dr. John C. Maxwell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on leadership, and Darren Hardy, whose book The Compound Effect has profoundly shaped my life.

The core of it is straightforward: Are you making progress every day toward whatever goal matters to you?

Years ago, shortly after I graduated from college, someone shared a simple truth with me that stuck: zero times zero is nothing. But something times something adds up over time. And that “something,” when applied consistently, can become powerful.

The Power of the Compound Effect

Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect captures this perfectly. Small inputs, repeated daily, compound dramatically over time—for better or for worse. Small positive actions invested daily can lead to remarkable outcomes. The same is true for small negative ones.

Hardy uses a classic example to illustrate the math: start with one penny and double it every day for 31 days. On day one you have a penny. On day two you have two cents. Then four, then eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four… After ten or fifteen days, it still feels like almost nothing. But on day 30 you have over $5 million. On day 31, you have more than $10 million. Keep going and, by day 38, you’ve crossed the billion-dollar mark.

The math never changes. Doubling is still just doubling, whether you’re going from one cent to two or from $5 million to $10 million. The critical part is the consistency. If you skip days, you still end up with a large number, but you never reach the same total. That’s the power of moving the needle every single day.

Small Cracks of Time

John Maxwell has a related insight about time that has shaped how I operate. Most people underestimate how long a given activity will actually take. At the same time, they undervalue the small pieces of time that are already available to them.

A few years ago, I earned a significant certification in sleep, stress management, and recovery. It took me roughly two to three months. I didn’t block out large chunks of time. Instead, I used the small cracks already in my day—while eating breakfast, during lunch, and on walks—by shifting time I was already spending reading on my phone or tablet. In a matter of weeks, I had another credential under my belt.

When a coworker noticed the update to my credentials on our bio board at the club and asked when I’d done it, I told him the truth: in the cracks of my day. It wasn’t a heroic effort. It was simply using small pieces of time I would have otherwise spent reading. Combined with the compound effect, that modest daily investment has let me serve more people more effectively—both in my own life and with clients. The initial time spent has continued to pay dividends.

A Real-Life Example: Cooper Langston

I want to dedicate this post (and the video that will come from it) to a young man named “Air Force” Cooper Langston. About a month ago, I interviewed him on my YouTube channel in an episode titled Rare Air.

Cooper came to me right after he finished eighth grade. His mom brought him to the club, and I assumed she was the one looking for a trainer. I was quickly corrected. Cooper wanted to hire me. When I asked why a kid who had just finished middle school wanted a trainer, he didn’t talk about getting bigger or looking better. He said he wanted to go to the Air Force Academy after high school and needed help getting there.

We worked together all through high school. He wasn’t accepted to the Academy on his first try, so he went to prep school, crushed it, and reapplied. This time the Academy welcomed him. As I share this, he’s in Colorado Springs, and I’m proud of him.

Two moments from our relationship have stuck with me. The first happened while he was still in high school. He was taking a heavy load of advanced classes. One of them required an essay, and he hit a wall—total writer’s block. Then he remembered the idea I’d taught him: move the needle every day. He wrote about using small windows of free time productively (for example, working on Spanish through Duolingo instead of scrolling social media). The essay turned out well, and he later told me he was grateful I’d shared the concept with him.

Even more meaningful was something he said during our recent interview. That same mindset is still how he operates at the Academy, where the schedule is relentlessly demanding. Between academics, athletics, and everything else, he keeps chipping away at what needs to be done each day. He also shared something he learned from a fellow cadet that resonated with me: work hard for six days and rest on the seventh. It’s biblical in origin—God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh—and it’s practical. If you don’t handle your work during the six days, it bleeds into the seventh, and you end up grinding seven days a week. That, as Cooper put it, will fry your wires. I couldn’t have been more proud to hear him say it.

The Bottom Line

So many people waste small chunks of time without realizing the cost. Nothing times nothing is still nothing. But daily effort, compounded over time, is powerful. Albert Einstein reportedly called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. The same principle applies to the way we invest our days.

Are you moving the needle today?