Applications Of Exponents In Real Life

In my last post, I talked about how working with exponents and variables make you feel more grown up. After finishing that post, I wanted to delve a little deeper in the concept and power of exponents (pun not intended).

While exploring exponents, I came across a very interesting post that not only highlights the impact of exponents, but also shows the difference of pushing yourself just a little out of your comfort zone.

It said:

1.01³⁶⁵=37.8

0.99³⁶⁵=0.03

I am truly astonished by the volume these few numbers – not even words – tell us.

When we do our normal tasks, and give our average best we practically perform 1.00 or 100% you could say. It could mean just doing your daily tasks – nothing more, nothing less.

When you push yourself forward and do a little extra than you thought you could actually do you, you give your 1.01 or 101%. It’s just a little more than what you would normally do. It’s more than usual, but definitely nothing drastic. It is like working out for 35 minutes if you normally worked out for 30 minutes.

When you just loaf around and become sluggish, or get sick you obviously underperform, hence giving your 0.99 or 99%. It’s like your usual work out duration is 30 minutes but you just worked out for 15-20 minutes. 

What one can see from this eye-opening post is that when you put in your 1.01 day after day, for a whole year you get 37.8. It might not seem like much right now. 

But just watch now. When you just do your normal and the daily average, at the end of the year all you get is 1.00. It’s not exactly bad, because at least you have what you started with. But it’s not great either since you don’t get anything extra. If you’re putting in effort for a whole damn year you might as well get something out of it. 

So 37.8 is way more than just good as compared to 1.00 if you look at it.

However that’s not all there is. 

When you become sluggish or lazy and continue to do so the whole year (I hope no one gives their 0.99 the whole year), you don’t get even as much as what you started with. All you get is 0.03. This simply tells half-hearted efforts do no good to anyone.

Now is the time for the big comparison. 

Can you guess how much difference there is in the result of 1.01 and 0.99 over a year?

The results of giving your 101% are … Wait for it… FREAKING 1260 TIMES THAN THAT OF GIVING YOUR 99%. 

This observation was not included in the post that I saw and when I did find this out by calculating, I WAS MIND BLOWN. Mind blown might be a small word. I was baffled, bewildered, perplexed and rattled, and any other synonym you can find for amazed, all at the same time. This is not 10 times the result. Not 100 times. Not even a 1000 times. But literally 1260 times. I think that’s just insane.

If you can’t get motivation to push yourself forward, just remember if you do more everyday you are going to end up with results greater than you could ever imagine.

Phew! That got me moving from my bed.