Exponential growth and decay are not intuitive, those who grasp the concept can spot opportunities and dangers ahead of time. An old Indian fable for today.

Once, there was a wise man who spotted a change in harvest and warned the king about the exponential decline in food production threatening his power and throne.

The king dismissed the warning as outsized and dramatic.

To illustrate, the wise man asked for a chessboard and challenged the king to place one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, and so on, doubling the amount of rice for each subsequent square.

The king found the challenge trivial and ordered the minister to squash the challenge by getting a few sacks from the royal granary.

The second row was done with just 32,768 grains, the king realized his folly as they began to fill each square.

64th square requires 9,223,372,036,854,780,000 grains of rice. That's 9.2 quintillion! There isn't enough rice in the world for this one square alone.

The total number of grains is over 18 quintillion, it does not make any sense and that is the power of exponential, or compounding growth.

So, when you observe exponential patterns in nature, life, or business.

Stop, drop everything and it is time to be alert, observe, and act.

It is no surprise that Mother Nature use exponential function to destroy and to create to rejuvenate and replenish within short time frame.

Remember, 150-year-old Lehman Brothers collapsed over the weekend, and the coronavirus spread worldwide in a matter of days,  Moore’s law in semiconductors is keeping up exponential growth changing the Tech landscape faster than we humans can handle.

Share this fable with your children.

Life is linear and sequential at school and University, you reap what you sow.

But in real life, success is about sowing in areas where you can reap many times over. Sowing in as many areas and as early as you can increases your luck surface area.

Take it easy until next time.

You can read all my “Notes to Self” at view all blogs.