Exponential Growth and Anxiety

One of the things that I remember being amazed at in early math classes was the idea of exponential growth. There was this long tail of going close to nowhere for a long time period, and then you get this sudden ramp up into a hockey-stick curve with unlimited long-term potential. An understanding of exponential growth, for me, has been a fairly strong bulwark against anxiety in a lot of different domains.

With my entrepreneurial ventures, I know that there is a long tail before things start turning up. That’s why in my planning phases of the HackingFIRE project, I settled upon a growth curve with a fairly significant hockey-stick growth pattern later in the project’s timeline. Looking at the numbers specifically, I’ve got to grow what is this month a ~$500 income+investment plan into one that will be a combined ~$40,000 monthly income+investment plan. That’s an 80x increase in monthly income+investments in 1.5 years… a fairly hefty ambition. A lot of this is going to be attributed to positive feedback loops. Successful product launch -> social capital -> a more successful product launch next time. It’s a flywheel that leads to even more vigorous growth.

With social movements, you can see a sort of exponential growth as well. Popular third party movements often have to reach a critical mass to get media attention, but after that point the media attention becomes a positive feedback loop: media attention begets more media attention, all while picking up supporters along the way. BLM grew exponentially as more cases of police brutality and murder pushed more people into the movement. Right wing extremism sees exponential increases as economic downturn pushes moderates who were right of center to begin with even further right.

This exponential growth phenomena can be observed in any number of factors in our society. Using our understanding of this basic mathematical principle can allow us to better understand positive/negative feedback loops and growth patterns, as well as basic statistics. It’s something I try to keep in mind as much as possible throughout my day and research.