Compound interest is the most underrated mental model because people think it only applies to money.

It governs everything in your life. Every skill you build sits on top of every skill you built before it. Every article I write today stands on a mountain of value that only exists because hundreds of worse articles came first. That can't be compressed or skipped.

The same applies to AI.

Two people start using it on the same day.

One summarizes emails. The other tries to solve a hard problem and fails. Six months later, the first has a linear return; minute 180 gives the same as minute 1.

The other has built an internal detector for when AI is useful and when it's slop dressed up in impeccable grammar. Every new hour he invests yields more than the last, exponentially.

The person waiting for AI to mature before learning it is “timing the market.” But “time in the market” is what the long-term investor prefers.