The Return on Compounding Discipline

I ate 20 pounds of cookies, so you didn't have to...

Recently, I’ve been struck by how our habits, characteristics, and choices compound into the person we become.

After a few family reunions this summer—especially time spent with the older generations nearing their end—I started noticing something. The type of person someone is at the end of their life usually wouldn’t surprise you if you had met them 25, 50, or even 75 years earlier.

We are the result of our choices—day by day, month by month, year by year. What feels like a small, throwaway decision can slowly steer your life in the wrong direction, even if no one else notices.

Now, about compounding...

There’s an ad going around for a mattress that claims it can give you 28 more minutes of sleep per night. That doesn’t sound like much, but let’s do the math:

• In a week: 3.25 hours of extra sleep

• In a month: 14 hours (basically two full nights)

• In a year: 170 hours—twenty-four extra nights of sleep

That’s how quickly small things add up.

Now take a less healthy example. My fiancée and I recently started a wedding diet—cutting sugars, processed food, and junk. But one of our shared vices is the chocolate chip cookie. In our more indulgent weeks, we could down 3 or 4 each—sometimes more. (Let’s be honest, I’ve eaten 4 in one sitting.)

If each cookie is ~400 calories and we average 4 a week, that’s:

• In a week: 4 cookies – 1,600 calories

• In a month: 18 cookies – 7,200 calories

• In a year: 208 cookies – 83,200 calories

That’s the equivalent of 20–25 pounds of excess food in a year. From cookies alone. That could mean 5–10 pounds of fat gained annually—without even counting chips, soda, or all the other stuff we barely notice.

So what’s the real weight here?

Our habits compound—and they do so faster than we think.

Let’s turn that logic toward something good: prayer.

A 2021 Pew survey found that about 50% of Catholics say they pray daily. Let’s assume that prayer lasts around 5 minutes. Here's what that adds up to:

• In a week: 35 minutes

• In a month: 2.5 hours

• In a year: 30 hours

That’s 30 hours of prayer a year—less than one work week. And yet many of us hope for a deep connection with God from that small daily slice.

Now flip the script. What if you gave prayer 30 minutes a day—just cutting into screen time or idle scrolling?

• In a week: 3.5 hours

• In a month: 15 hours

• In a year: 182.5 hours—4.5 full work weeks

That’s a significant investment. And it would change your heart.

Where will the rest of your time go? That is up to you.

Choose the good.

Praying for you,

-CB