Have you ever been disappointed with a lack of immediate gratification or for maybe not achieving a particular short-term benchmark you had set for yourself? It’s in times like these that I am reminded by Ray Kurzweil, whom created what he terms “The Law of Accelerating Returns“.

What the Law of Accelerating Returns implies (it’s lengthy and very complex so I’m going sum it up in my own words): due to conditions and variables relating to advancement/improvement change will start slow and build to a point of exponential and then eventually exponentially exponential growth or return. A great example would be computer technology. Hell in the 70′s/80′s computers were HIGHLY experimental – now only thirty years later we can’t comprehend or even imagine living without them. Fast forward to 2004 Facebook is created. Web 2.0 and even the term “social media” wasn’t on the map or in existence until 2003. Now just seven years later in 2010 social media primarily led by Facebook  has become a way of life.

Social media wouldn’t have developed and been birthed into the world without the hard working engineers/pioneers/dreamers of the 70′s/80′s working on huge, clumsy, and expensive super computers found in laboratories owned by only a few universities.  This is prime example of the law of accelerating returns.

This is EXACTLY why we routinely overshoot our objectives/goals when viewed in the short term (one year) and grossly under-predict our objectives/goals for the longer term (3-5+ years).

If you think for one second that the above information doesn’t have anything to do with how your business develops and grows over time you’re sorely mistaken. Most people quit, get discouraged, or let go and set on the shelf their masterpiece in life precisely because they don’t understand this law.

…and they don’t have MIGHT.