I remember reading about this in the James Clear's Book - The Atomic Habit. If you do small things consistently for longer period of time. You reach a stage where all those compounded efforts pay off. There is also one good book on "compounding effect" which points the same. I feel sometimes we do things regardless of thinking whether it has positive or negative consequences because it's not always about us and when we want things to be about us, we let our different efforts compound.