To get anywhere, it's thus very important to quickly build a substantial foundation. Setting small goals in a situation which depends on exponential growth is a guaranteed way of not seeing results very fast. Conversely, putting in a large initial effort is a guaranteed way of seeing immediate and growing returns. The middle of the curve shows a proportional relationship between effort and results–work more and get more results; work less and get fewer results. In other words, this is the stage where extra effort is rewarded more than it was in the beginning, because it's leveraged by the now higher production. With further effort, the production ceiling starts to kick in due to limits on resources, customers, responsibilities, market size, etc. You might have found yourself with a job description that could be done in three hours a day even though you nominally have to work for eight hours. If so you know what I mean about reaching the productivity ceiling. In such a situation, it makes little sense to increase work effort by 25% if the return in productivity only increases by five percent. In such a case it is better to start additional projects, look for more responsibility, or learn something else. These projects would then each have their own curve for you to progress along. The optimal life strategy is to maximize total "production" for all the things you engage in or whatever the curves are measuring–presumably you'd have a curve for each project and multidimensional returns for each project, where total utility (see Building blocks) is maximized (see Ecological).