The truth about “overnight success”
Updated 2024-10-28. Originally published 2016-01-11 on VocationVillage.com
Everyone loves instant gratification, but in reality, success rarely happens instantly. The truth about “overnight success” is that it takes many years to achieve.
I searched for people and companies you will probably recognize to find out how many years it took for them to achieve success. Here is what I found:
Agatha Christie - 10
Apple - 20
Chappell Roan - 10
Dyson - 15
Facebook - 9
Google - 8
Microsoft - 11
Ramit Sethi - 10
Stack Overflow - 13
Starbucks - 16
The outlier “lottery odds” success story is Amazon, which took 3 years to make Jeff Bezos a billionaire.
Jeff Atwood is a co-founder of Stack Overflow, a website bought by Prosus for $1.8B. Jeff Atwood wrote on his blog Coding Horror:
“I have zero expectation or even desire for overnight success. What I am planning is several years of grinding through constant, steady improvement. This business plan isn’t much different from my career development plan: success takes years. And when I say years, I really mean it! Not as some cliched regurgitation of ‘work smarter, not harder.’ I’m talking actual calendar years. You know, of the 12 months, 365 days variety. You will literally have to spend multiple years of your life grinding away at this stuff, waking up every day and doing it over and over, practicing and gathering feedback each day to continually get better. It might be unpleasant at times and even downright un-fun occasionally, but it’s necessary.”
Why is it important to know the truth about how long success takes?
So that you can create a reality-informed plan rather than rely on impossibly optimistic metrics.
So that you don’t feel like a failure if success isn’t immediate.
So that you can choose a path that is sufficiently enjoyable to you that you will invest up to a decade of effort.
So that you can assess your tolerance for uncertainty and your capacity for patience, and if you have work to do in improving these areas, you can start.
Sources:
5 inspiring guys who prove overnight success is BS
How did Chappell Roan get famous?
Overnight success: It takes years
The myth of overnight success
The startup myth of overnight success: 12 companies it took years to succeed
The story behind the success of Stack Overflow
This is how long “overnight success” really takes
Why successful people take 10 years to “succeed overnight”
Can you think of other examples of success that took time to build? Please share them with me.
