Part 5 - All you need to excel is to survive. The power of time compounding across finance and life
Give yourself the runway and keep walking, you'll be surprised how far you'll reach in the end. It may not be glamorous but a definitive way of succeeding in almost any aspect of life. Keep doing the boring work without giving up for a long time and enjoy the benefits of compounding without even realizing it.
In finance, if you maintain an additional rate of return of even a percentage point over a long time, it adds up rapidly. There are plenty of inspiration quotes circulating with calculation of 1.01 vs 0.99 over a long period to establish the impact of compounding.
In the stock market, if you play the long game and keep investing without trying to time the market or getting into derivatives without giving it a proper & detailed study, you can still come out more than happy with the accumulated returns over time. Your alternate investment may look amazing because of the sheer numbers but when you do a simple arithmetic breakdown, it won't look as amazing.
At workplace, if you give yourself time to hone relevant skills, your value is bound to increase. You don't have to come up with a magic formula of success. Just stick to the job and do the work earnestly, you're bound to become a center of excellence with which you'll see your value increasing over time even though it may feel like you're stuck. A general rule of thumb is relevance and loyalty gets paid with more impactful opportunities while skilled talent gets recruited for higher immediate monetary incentive. Essentially, someone super-skilled may be paid more but you get to be the decision maker and governing authority.