When Overnight Success Takes a While
Anyone I’ve ever spoken to or helped on a quest to find purpose or create a more meaningful life had some hangup about the timeline to get there.
The people who took time off work to find a more meaningful career usually expected it to take a few months at most.
These ideas are the result of social expectations that were formed because of a false media—in particular social media—narrative. We look at everyone as an overnight success because they either intentionally portrayed their story this way or we never heard of them while they were going through years of thankless work. Either way, we only notice the period of exponential growth and success.
Chris Williamson is a podcaster who, as I write this, has an audience of about 3M subscribers on YouTube. He was a successful model and club promoter in the UK and started the podcast because he wanted to speak to interesting people. From the very beginning, he set himself a grueling posting schedule of 3 episodes per week. Despite that superhuman effort, it took him almost 3 years, or about 450 episodes, to get his first 100K subscribers. A little over five years later he was getting an additional 100K subscribers every 2 weeks, or 6 episodes.
Most things worth doing take a long time to become overnight successes.
People who have a more realistic view than the overnight success crowd think it would take too long, so they never even start. This is the result of a warped societal view of our life. There is a perspective that our 20s and 30s are the time to build our careers and discover our zones of genius, and by our 40s and 50s, we should be “settled” and keep growing from that baseline. It’s too late to do anything else. The time to pursue other interests is when we retire.
But let’s look at the reality: The life expectancy of the people reading these words is likely at least 90-100.
If you’re 35, you’ve been an adult for 17 years and have about 60 years left.
If you’re 45, you’ve been an adult for 27 years and have about 50 years left.
If you’re 55, you’ve been an adult for 37 years and have about 40 years left.
Would you rather live your ideal life 5-10 years from now or a mediocre life for the next 40, 50, 60+ years?
I’m aiming for a spot on the long continuum between becoming an overnight success and not trying. How about you?
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