How to Find Success in Life Thanks To Residual Results

Nowadays, everything you put online will remain there forever if you have a modest following. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad for your reputation.

On one hand, that’s a threat because there is no more right to be forgotten. On the other hand, it is an advantage for someone trying to build a social presence or a side hustle.

I won’t discuss morality and politics besides the problem. But I want to talk about the potential that the Internet provides us today.

So, let’s talk about the benefits of having a platform that never forgets what you say.

When I was younger, I underestimated the power of immortal content. And for this reason, you can find awful photos from my youth on Facebook.

Nobody taught us how to use the Internet and social media. So when they allowed us to showcase our lives, we did it. But think about this.

After your death, your content might continue to get visits and comments from people . And even one hundred years from now, this newsletter might go viral somewhere.

Maybe Substack won’t exist anymore. But you may find it somewhere else. And it might even generate subscriptions and money after my departure.

Before the Internet, authors had to put their work in a book, album, or painting to make it survive their death. But today, you may just put it on the Internet. And the good news is that you can use this feature also for shorter-term success.

(Don’t worry! You don’t have to wait for your death for your work to get discovered.)

You can use content immortality to your advantage. But how?

How can you use that, and what exactly are residual results?

Since I started The Challenge and Cosmopolitan Mindset, I’ve talked about content and side hustles because they are my daily experience. Residual results were a frequent example I used because they fit those topics perfectly. But you can apply them to any result that adds up over time. That’s why the persistence of online content is a good fit.

Here’s how it works.

Suppose you made a piece of content that survives on the Internet for more than a few days.

Whatever the benefits you try to achieve, you want to maximize them in the first days you finish the work.

Now, it doesn’t matter if you achieved your goals or not. That work will remain there. And, in the future, other people might search for it even if you don’t actively promote it.

So, you will have smaller gains that continue over time. And those gains are residual results that enrich your net income (whatever that is).

Now, I’ve talked about one piece of work. But what if you make tens or hundreds?

The residual results will add up over time and reach the total you make with one piece of work in the first days. Some of your content might get viral even after years and profit more than you would have typically made in a month.

If you keep posting, those residual results might become your first source of income. It doesn’t seem that bad, right?

So, the question now is, how can you build immortal content and routines?

Systems with residual results use the immortality of some tasks/activities to continue to give your outcomes over time. However, in my experience, I noticed using two systems is the best way to build residual effects. One of them feeds, and the other consumes.

When you start from scratch, you have nothing that could give you residual profit. Your extra net income is zero. And the only results you get come from your daily activities.

Your results are equal to the amount of effort you make. So, you must build a linear system:

• if you work more, you gain more
• otherwise, you don’t gain anything.

And you must keep this system until you get some passive income. But that’s not advantageous either.

In a perfect world:

• you must build enough residual results first
• and then you can stop working.

But that’s not possible in reality:

1. Residual results are volatile. So, you would live in a precarious situation because nothing assures you will have a fixed income each month.
2. Also, is there a moment you will be satisfied with what you have? Keeping both systems alive increases your income. So, why would you abandon one of them?
3. And third, the easiest way to make consistent residual results is to remind people your older work exists. And you might use your linear system for that.

Once you build a linear and residual system, search for timeless topics people might find as engaging today as ten years from now.

So, talking about the news or the latest trends can give you instant results. But it won’t feed your long-term plan.

On the other hand, topics like health, success, and productivity are timeless because they remain the same. Our generation finds them intriguing. And even the next generation will benefit from them.

• Timely subjects give you discoverability and allow you to survive in the present.
• Timeless topics provide durability and make you build a future.

After you create both systems, you only need to feed your residual results with linear ones.

• Promote your timeless topics with each timely post.
• And use the same work more than once to keep getting results thanks to it.

I would use the Pareto Principle as a starting point to split between 80% timely and 20% timeless topics. However, as your residual results grow, you can increase the percentages to 50/50 and finally invert the trend.

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