Compounding interest isn't just for money—it's for skills, projects, and quality of life.

From 2015 to 2020, right up to the pandemic, I had a weekly residency at a place in San Francisco called the Kava Lounge. It was an alternative bar where drinks like Kava, Kratom, and other teas and CBD drinks were sold. Bar meets burner vibe meets woo meets SF. Let's just say it was a vibe.

Each week I came by and played two hours of music. At first, I just wanted a place to play live and practice sitar. At some point, whether from boredom or ambition, I decided improvising for the whole set was not enough for me. I began to focus my improvisations on specific skills I was learning or modes/ragas I wanted to improve or moods I wanted to express. Leaps, fast runs, arpeggios, you name it—I started to focus on it.

The end of each performance was a time to reflect and see what I could do better, not only on musical concerns but practical ones. I first came to the lounge with a small, cheap amplifier and captured audio through a microphone. Poor sound quality and inconvenient with the microphone. Buying a proper monitor and a pickup were high leverage improvements. I considered what I could do to make the performances more engaging—better integration with the house sound system, backing tracks, you name it.

The weekly practice improved my skills on the musical and practical front, but the real shift came as new musicians came through to join me. I used the residency as an opportunity to connect with musicians in the Bay Area—"hey I have a residency at the Kava Lounge, I play there every Monday night. You should come through and we'll jam". More and more musicians would come through—they would join me for completely improvised swaths of music.

I loved the interactions and the challenge of listening to each other, but the musical results were mixed. I recall seeing and feeling the discomfort of the majority of musicians who came through—the lack of direction in the music created not only a wandering but a confusion for most players. Turns out saying "let's just play in Phrygian and see what happens" isn't the easiest thing to follow. It's bad musical hosting when it comes to inviting new musicians into your musical home.

That's when I started writing new music specifically for the residency. The first tune I wrote was very simple, one called Sun Landing —mixolydian mode, a basic melody, and interesting enough to play over. Having written music, charts for people not only esto look at but a form for them to follow, gave the music direction and momentum whenever we would play. It gave the music a sense of beginning, middle, and end—a contrast from the 5-20 minutes of wandering through musical landscapes (fascinating exploration for me but often unnerving for musicians rotating into the venue). Writing that tune fswas a high leverage improvement—30-60 minutes of writing in exchange for a clear, containerized piece of music that could be shared, distributed, mutually and concisely understood and discussed.

Each week I would write a new tune. They would explore different instrumental or compositional techniques I wanted to improve—Ai Miranda was partially inspired by wanting to improve leaps (playing a quick 10th on the sitar) while Midnight was inspired by the compositional challenge of mixing modes.

Each time I would write, it was a call to improve both my playing and my composing. I often came back to the residency with the tunes not fully fdsunder my fingers—I was still learning the tunes that I wrote. But with each new song and each new playthrough, there was an incremental improvement that I carried to the next performance.

This compounding improvement eventually created the conditions for my band High Tide, a story for another time. What I want to drive home here is that very small improvement week after week led to very big changes in the quality of the music and my skills as a musician. I started just casually improvising at a lounge. I am now composing dffor a 5-piece ensemble who executes my musical vision beautifully and whose musicians lend their genius to make the music better than I ever could alone.

As I continued to refine msdy music week by week, I started to see how these small, consistent efforts were compounding, much like how compound interest works in finance. 1% improvements go a long way over time. Consider this:

Final Amount = (1 + 1% / 100) ^ 365

Final Amount = (1 + 0.01) ^ 365 = 1.01 ^ 365

1.01 ^ 365 ≈ 37.78

If you improve something at a rate of 1% per day, you get almost 38X in return.

Let's put that into perspective. A d4% (1.04X) annual return is modest, an 8-12% (1.08 - 1.12X) return pretty good, and a 25% (1.25X) return excellent in modern investing. 38X is a 3800% return, 30X greater than an excellent 25% return (38 / 1.25). That's good value!

Of course, it's rare that we can get to improving 1% each day—but the point stands! We can go so far if we make incremental, gradual improvements that we source from feedback, expand with experimentation, and fortify with practice. Even if we don't get a full 38X, a regular 1% compounding improvement is likely to yield much more than a conventional good investment.

What skills, projects, or behaviors will you commit to improving by 1% each day? Identify one area in your life, set a small daily goal, and watch how it compounds over time. Start today—your future self will thank you.