I've spoken about impulses and echoes. You can (and should!) search upwardthought.org for that topic. There are at least a few videos worth watching that mention it.

I was ruminating about an experience I had yesterday. I had sent a note to Bryan Stone about a video he had posted that I enjoyed. I mentioned that I thought it had a lot of good clips that could be used as shorts. He seemed surprised that I thought that any part of that video could be presented outside of its surrounding context and asked which parts I had in mind. I quickly jumped on YouTube, copy pasted the transcript, and pulled out a few chunks. The whole process took maybe three minutes for me.

I don't know if Bryan will use those clips or not, but the point I make in sharing this is that we are in the habit of thinking of the effort of others or ourselves as experiences with a beginning and an end. This is unwise. After the initial effort (when we would consider something "done"), there is often a great deal more that could be done. Subsequent reuse of completed efforts typically requires far less effort than the initial effort, but can (and usually does) provide a much greater ratio of benefit to the cost compared to the original effort.

Think of it this way: The effort required to get a car rolling from a stop is immense, but the initial speed is slow. The effort required to pick up speed is far less. This is why cars have gears. The engine power doesn't change, but the gears make it possible to pick up much more speed with the same effort.

If all we do is leave life, our efforts, or those of others in first gear, we will never achieve anything close to what we could.

Coming back to the example of Bryan, I am guessing he spent a lot of time putting together and uploading his video. But by adding just three minutes, I helped him see several chunks of shorts that he could make in far less time than the original video that will probably reach far more people than the original, and probably boost the number of people that choose to watch the full version.

There are so many examples of similar incremental echoes that you have the ability to create in your own life. These go far beyond YouTube videos or even efforts to preach the gospel. At home, work, and everywhere besides, I promise you are surrounded by opportunities for outsized impact by leveraging efforts by yourself and others that have already been done.

The greatest barrier to taking advantage of these opportunities for echoes is believing they exist. The second greatest barrier is finding them. It's typically the case that they are better seen by others. We can do each other a great service by identifying them, and when possible, taking care of them ourselves. By so doing, you may find opportunities to make contributions that far exceed what you could do on your own. For example, there might be someone out there who can't make the kinds of videos Bryan does, but who could work with him to make clips of segments from his videos. That person wouldn't even need to be the one to identify the time sections for the videos. Their sacrifice of editing time would spare Bryan or me from having to take the time away from what only we could do in order to do what someone else could do.

Of course, to reach our potential in creating echoes, we first have to let go of the incorrect idea that we are all interchangeable and can all independently make equally valuable contributions. It's interesting how, at it's root, this pride is the real problem preventing so much more progress than we are all currently making.

As you look around your life, I invite you to think of opportunities to notice and take advantage of impulses from which you can create echoes. As you do this at home, at work, and in your religious activities, you'll have a much greater impact for good.