Why Overnight Success Takes Years

‘All overnight success takes about ten years.’ Jeff Bezos

‘Overnight success’ is a popular term. It suggests you’ve found a short-cut, which has put you ahead of the competition.

At first glance, overnight success appears to be everywhere. Sportspeople go from obscurity to world championships, and entrepreneurs seemingly build businesses in no time at all. This is the impression of overnight success – the breakthrough from the obscurity zone, to the awareness zone, to the superstar zone. But overnight success is an illusion; it doesn’t really exist.

Think about running a marathon. No-one simply wakes up one day, puts on their trainers, and runs a sub-3-hour marathon. It takes months of training, blistered feet and a great deal of mental courage. It only feels like overnight success to others because they don’t see what it takes – marginal gains, compounded over a long period.

Overnight Success - In The Eye of The Beholder

In today’s instant gratification world, almost everyone wants overnight success. This desire is fuelled by social media, which transports us into (the best parts of) others' lives. Juxtaposing the best moments of others’ lives with the ups and downs of our own, we want more, and we want it immediately.

It’s no coincidence that the terms FOMO (‘fear of missing out’) and YOLO (‘you only live once’) originated in recent years. Modern society conditions us to want quick success. However, quick success only arrives after years of work.

This reminds me of the lady who approached Pablo Picasso in a restaurant and asked him to sketch something on a napkin, offering to pay whatever he thought it was worth. Picasso rustled together a quick sketch and handed it back to the lady. ‘That will be $10,000,’ he said.

The astonished lady replied, ‘But it only took you thirty seconds!’.

To which Picasso replied, ‘It’s taken me forty years to be able to draw that in thirty seconds.’

The moral, of course, is that to reach top-level performance in any field – arts, sports, career, finances – it takes years of practice.

Overnight success seems appealing. But ‘how can I achieve overnight success?’ is the wrong question. ‘How can I achieve success?’ is the right one. It will seem like years of consistent application to you, and overnight success to everyone else.

To better understand this, we need to examine how we think about growth.

Linear vs Exponential Growth

The human mind tends to visualise growth in a linear fashion. We find it difficult to appreciate exponential growth.

When we look at progress, we foresee it will be slow, and that each extra hour we dedicate will yield the same proportionate results. This is Line A.

But the reality is that progress is exponential – like Line B. It takes a long time to get out of the obscurity zone, where no-one has heard of you. But once you get into the awareness zone, the time to become a superstar is short.

To be successful requires substantial work and time – all the way from the beginning to the superstar zone. But as far as everyone else is concerned, success is merely the time from when they first heard about you (the beginning of the awareness zone) until the superstar zone. That's just a fraction of the journey.

This why overnight success is a mirage – others see only a small part of the journey, but you see the years in the obscurity zone beforehand. These years are a prerequisite for success.

Consistency

The famous professional golfer, Ben Hogan, coined an excellent phrase: ‘Every day that you don’t practice is one day longer before you achieve greatness.’

It applies to all parts of life. If you put off taking action, or saving, or investing, it might seem inconsequential at the time, but it’s one more day until you reach the superstar zone.

And that missed day has more than a one-time effect. Every time you postpone a good habit – for finances or for life – it increases the chances that you postpone it again. As such, it takes longer to get to the ‘success threshold’, if indeed you get there at all.

As you can see, slower, but consistent growth usually leads to far better results than faster, but inconsistent growth.

Many people are talented, many know what it takes to succeed, but few have the dedication to stay the course, and build over time. This is why the ‘wow’ factor of overnight success exists – because in the eyes of most people, ‘overnight success’ is unfathomably good. They can’t imagine how it was achieved, because they don’t appreciate exponential growth. In reality, it requires consistent, slow growth. Becoming just 1% better every day has an outsized impact down the line.

To Succeed in Several Years, Start Now

All this to say that it takes years to become an overnight success. So to succeed, start now, and be consistent.

This applies equally in financial and business matters, in your hobbies, and in broader life. Large gains are made in the small steps today, which set you up to go vertical in the future.

Reframe the ‘FOMO’ and ‘get rich quick’ attitude, and focus instead on the simpler question:

Within your life, what can you start today and repeat consistently, to get yourself on track for success?

Because the seeds planted today will become the crops you harvest tomorrow.