bad: 1. **Skill Development**: Early effort often seems to yield little progress, but once foundational skills are built, improvements accelerate dramatically (e.g., learning a musical instrument or coding). 2. **Health and Fitness**: Initial gains might be slow, but as fitness improves, the body becomes more efficient, leading to exponential gains in performance and health benefits. 3. **Creativity and Innovation**: Initial ideas might be incremental, but they can lead to breakthrough innovations over time as understanding deepens and connections between ideas form. 4. **Networking**: Relationships might seem insignificant at first, but over time, a strong network can lead to significant opportunities and exponential career growth. 5. **Habits and Routines**: Small daily habits can lead to massive long-term changes due to the cumulative effect (e.g., reading daily leading to extensive knowledge). 6. **Content Creation**: Initially, growth is slow, but as an audience builds, the reach and impact of content can grow exponentially. 7. **Mentorship and Teaching**: The impact of teaching others can multiply as those individuals apply and spread the knowledge further. 8. **Investing**: Early investments might start small, but compounded returns over time can lead to significant wealth accumulation. 9. **Starting a Startup**: Initial stages may involve slow progress and minimal traction, but scalability and [[Network effects]] can eventually lead to exponential growth and success. Each of these activities may initially show linear progress, but with sustained effort, they often lead to exponential, nonlinear outcomes. ### Related - [[Activation energy]]