The Pattern Problem & The 2 Questions Driving Who You Are

I had just come from a cardiologist appointment. John and Victor (names anonymized to protect my friends’ privacy) were waiting for me at PJ Clarke's, fresh from a workout. I was late—they already had the table, menus open—but I made it just in time to order.

The conversation drifted through the usual territory until John posed a question that stuck with me: "I think everyone who helps someone else only does it because there's something in it for them."

He's a religious guy, and he used religion to prove his point—when he helps a stranger, part of him knows he's accumulating blessings, credit in God's ledger. The altruism isn't pure. There's always a transaction.

He turned to Victor. "When's the last time you helped someone out of your way?" Victor paused, thought about it, couldn't come up with anything recent. This bothered him—not because the question was unfair, but because it revealed something he hadn't wanted to see.

Then John turned to me.

My answer came out before I'd fully thought it through: "I help people because if I don't, the thought lingers. Like I neglected something I was supposed to do."

John wanted this to be about religion. But as I explained it more, I realized it wasn't. What I actually felt was that by not helping, I'd be casting a vote—a vote for becoming someone who doesn't help. And that every choice like this, no matter how small, was a vote for the kind of person I'm becoming.

That reframing seemed trivial at the time. Dinner moved on. But I've thought about it constantly since, because I think it reveals something about human psychology that, once you see it, explains a lot of self-sabotage.

The Wrong Question

Most people, when facing a decision, ask: "What should I do?"

This framing is almost always wrong, because it treats the decision as isolated. Should I go to the gym today? Should I send that email? Should I help this person? Each choice appears as its own little dilemma, to be evaluated on its own merits.

But decisions aren't isolated. They're patterned. And patterns compound.

The person who skips the gym "just today" is running an experiment: what happens when I skip? The answer, usually, is nothing. No immediate punishment. The world continues. So the next time the decision arises, the skip-option has been validated. It's slightly easier to choose. Not because anything external changed, but because a precedent now exists.

This is how patterns form. Not through dramatic choices, but through tiny precedents that accumulate until they become defaults.

The Right Question

The better framing is: "What pattern am I reinforcing?"

This question does something the first one doesn't—it connects the present choice to a trajectory. It forces you to see the decision not as a single point, but as a vote in an ongoing election. An election where the winner becomes your identity.

When you ask "should I go to the gym today?" you can easily rationalize a no. You're tired. You went yesterday. One day won't matter. All true, in isolation.

But when you ask "what pattern am I reinforcing?"—you have to confront something harder. You're either reinforcing the pattern of someone who trains consistently, or the pattern of someone who finds reasons not to. There's no third option. Inaction is itself a vote.

Why Your Brain Sabotages You

Here's where it gets interesting. Humans are famously bad at intuiting exponential functions. We can feel linear growth—ten dollars a day for a year feels like it's worth about $3,650, and it is. But compound growth breaks our intuitions completely. A penny doubled daily for 30 days feels like it should be worth a few dollars. It's actually $5.3 million.

This isn't just a math curiosity. It's a deep flaw in human cognition that sabotages our decision-making constantly.

The tragedy is this: exponential curves start slower than linear ones. Put them on the same graph and, for the first several periods, the linear line is actually ahead. Exponential growth only overtakes linear growth later—sometimes much later. Which means that at the moment of decision, when you're comparing options, the exponentially better choice will often feel worse.

Going to the gym once feels like nothing. Eating a salad feels like something—immediate, tangible, virtuous. Both are good decisions. But the gym compounds in ways the salad doesn't. The salad gives you roughly what you'd expect: some nutrients, some fiber, slightly better digestion that day. The gym gives you something that's nearly invisible at first but accumulates into a completely different body, energy level, mental clarity, and self-image over years. The first few gym sessions might actually feel less rewarding than the first few salads. That's the trap.

This is true for almost every high-value behavior. The things that compound dramatically tend to feel the most pointless in the early stages, precisely because exponential curves start slow. Writing one page feels meaningless compared to reading an interesting article. Sending one networking email feels awkward compared to browsing LinkedIn passively. Having one difficult conversation feels painful compared to just letting things slide.

In every case, the higher-leverage choice feels worse initially.

The Discomfort Heuristic

This suggests a counterintuitive heuristic: if you're choosing between two reasonably good options and one feels noticeably more uncomfortable or pointless in the short term, that's often a signal that it's the exponential bet.

Not always. Some things feel bad because they're actually bad. But among choices that are plausibly beneficial, short-term discomfort or apparent meaninglessness often correlates with long-term compounding.

The workout that feels like a waste of time. The cold email that feels awkward. The skill practice that feels tedious. The boundary-setting conversation that feels harsh. The early-morning routine that feels brutal. These tend to be the exponential plays. And they tend to feel worse than their linear alternatives precisely when you need to start them—at the beginning, when the exponential curve is at its flattest.

Your brain will try to talk you out of these choices using perfectly reasonable logic. One session won't matter. You can start tomorrow. The linear alternative is good too. This is all true in the immediate frame. It's catastrophically false in the cumulative frame.

The Tactic

Here's something concrete you can use immediately.

The next time you face a decision—especially a small one where you're tempted to take the easier path—complete this sentence:

"If I choose X, I'm voting to become the kind of person who ___."

Fill in the blank honestly.

If I skip the gym, I'm voting to become the kind of person who skips when it's inconvenient. If I send the email, I'm voting to become the kind of person who handles uncomfortable tasks promptly. If I help this stranger, I'm voting to become the kind of person who helps. If I walk past, I'm voting to become the kind of person who walks past.

Then ask a second question: "Is this a linear or exponential bet?"

Linear bets give you roughly what they appear to give you. Exponential bets appear to give you almost nothing at first, then everything later. The discomfort of the early stages is a feature, not a bug—it's the price of admission to the steep part of the curve that most people never reach because they quit while the curve is still flat.

The Hidden Leverage

This reframing reveals where the real leverage exists in your life.

Most people think high-leverage decisions are the big ones: what career to pursue, who to marry, where to live. Those matter, but they're rare—a handful per decade.

The decisions you make dozens of times daily—how you spend your morning, whether you keep small promises, how you respond to minor friction, whether you do the slightly harder thing or slightly easier thing—these feel low-leverage because their individual stakes are low. But they're the highest-leverage decisions you make, because they're the raw material of exponential curves.

One gym session is nothing. A thousand gym sessions is a different person.

One awkward networking email is nothing. A thousand such emails is a different career.

One moment of helping a stranger is nothing. A thousand such moments is a different character.

The question is whether you can tolerate the flat part of the curve long enough to reach the steep part. Most people can't. Not because they lack discipline, but because their intuitions are calibrated for linear growth, and exponential growth feels like a lie until it suddenly doesn't.

The Identity Flip

Back at that dinner, John wanted to know why people help each other. It's a fine philosophical question. But I think the more useful question is mechanical: what does the pattern of helping or not helping actually do to you over time?

And the answer is that it compounds. Not linearly—you don't just become "a little more helpful" with each act. You become a different kind of person, with different defaults, different instincts, different possibilities available to you. The same is true for every pattern you run.

This sounds abstract, but the implication is concrete: if you want to change who you are, you need to change your relationship with discomfort. Not dramatically—you don't need to become an ascetic. But you need to learn to recognize the feeling of "this seems pointless right now" as a possible signal that you're on an exponential curve, in the flat part, where most people quit.

The things that will change your life the most are probably the things that feel the least rewarding in the beginning. That's not a motivational platitude. It's a mathematical property of exponential functions, applied to human behavior.

The question is never "what should I do?"

The question is "what pattern am I reinforcing, and does it compound?"

You're answering it every day, whether you realize it or not.