People dream of overnight success. It gives us hope that we can achieve success no matter how late we start because it only takes one day to get there. While it is a great idea in theory, it doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s a myth, much like unicorns and the tooth fairy.
I used to think in this line of thinking as well. “What’s the point of trying hard when we can achieve success literally in a day?” That was my line of thinking. I realized just how incorrect that line of thinking was until I broke out of the optimist mindset and focused on reality. I’m glad I learned the lesson early on.
The biggest fault that lies in creating the concept of overnight success lies with the media. The media loves to play to people’s emotions to drive clicks and eyeballs to their website. Things that elicit positive or negative emotions. One of the people’s biggest fantasies lies in achieving wild success with little effort.
Whether we like it or not, that is one of our biggest fantasies because in general, our number one goal in life is self actualization. So when someone sells us the fairytale and the dream that self actualization will come easily and without effort, we can’t help but read more about the story.
In reality, success comes with time and effort. No one is born with success already built in. Yes, inheritances exist but even those people wouldn’t say that they were born successful. You nurture success by planting the seed, watering it, growing it, and letting time pass. That’s how you build your life to winning and success.
Opportunities will not come to you easily, you have to seek out and grab opportunities that you know you deserve.
First, What is Overnight Success?
Overnight success is success that comes very quickly, almost in a single day. There are blog and media posts that talk about success that people got to, very quickly. Articles such as these talk about five examples of people who achieved success very quickly. For example, Pinterest.
When you read the Pinterest story, you realize that the article talks about the success of Pinterest… Five years after it was created. Does that sound like overnight success to you? Five years sounds and feels like an eternity and it is an eternity. The last five years of my life felt fulfilling and that a lot happened in the past five years.
Be very skeptical and read through the details to figure out if the message the author wants to convey is consistent with the facts involved. In this particular case, the facts and the message are completely separate and apart from each other. Do not get the misconception that the concept of fast success exists.
Even the examples of fast success are very slow in nature. It takes years of focused and deliberate work to get there by the end of it all. If success was that fast, easy, and attainable for the masses, then why aren’t there actual stories of people going to bed a failure and waking up as a success story? Let me tell you why.
It doesn’t exist. Throw this idea out the window. MrBeast, who many think will become the first Youtube billionaire, achieved success at a young age, 19. However, it took him SIX YEARS of consistently putting out entertaining content before he made it. Six whole years.
Everyone needs years in order to gain traction and perfect their craft.
Why Overnight Success Doesn’t Exist
One reason why overnight success doesn’t exist is because you’re not SMACKING that social share button and sharing to your favorite social media! My article cannot achieve fast success alone because I need other people’s help to get there!
If you enjoy the content that I provide and think your friends can benefit, please share this article for me! I would greatly appreciate it.
So with that said, let’s get into the concrete reasons why fast success doesn’t exist.
1) You Only See the Results
When people see competitions, they get to see all the final product of the players’ efforts and training. Final product of the meticulous and endless hours that they put in. It could be a physical competition, like in sports, or it could be in intellectual competition, like in chess. Whatever it is, you only see the results.
Natural talent is overrated, what actually matters is effort. When the right effort is put in, then greatness happens, which people are glad to show to you. That greatness gives you the misconception into how much effort, thought, and detail was put in to come up with the final result. The players almost make it look easy.
It’s anything but easy. At the extremely high level, it’s not even about the amount of hours that you put in. It’s about the amount of targeted and right hours that you put in. This is why overnight success doesn’t exist. You only get to see the results of everyone’s efforts, but rarely the actual effort behind the people’s success.
2) Even Lottery Winners Don’t Win on the First Try
Most lottery winners spent at least more than $1 buying lottery tickets. When I was little, I used to think, “hey, I can buy lottery tickets too! If they can do it, I can do it!” Oh, how little did I know. Lottery winners already spent a good amount of money on lottery tickets before they buy the one that makes them rich.
Lottery winners who in on first try aren’t just a rarity, there’s a rarity of the rarity of the rarity. There are stories that exist who won the lottery on first try. However, the number of these stories are much fewer than career lottery players to begin with. When it comes to lottery winnings, the concept of overnight success can exist.
However, they are fewer to spot than people who go to the gym after their New Years Resolution wears off. That’s how rare first time lottery winners are. Have I ever played the lottery before? Absolutely. However, I played it with the knowledge that I would never win in the first place. My prediction became true.
3) Overnight Success Stories Leave Out Key Details
When we see the “overnight success” stories that took years to get to, the media leaves out key details. They leave out details of when the company almost went bankrupt, of how the founders went through a divorce throughout the journey. They communicate the story in a way for the reader to believe that it is easy. That it’s convenient.
You don’t get to hear stories of how the founders almost had to declare bankruptcy throughout the process. Whatever it is, they leave out stories of almost failures and love to talk about the finished product of their efforts. Wouldn’t these key details have been important for you to know while reading the story?
That the story is not as simple as “if they can achieve success this quickly, why can’t you”? Language is used in warfare to instill psychological fear amongst people. Whenever someone is trying to send a message to you, any sort of message, you should be on guard. Psychological manipulation is more effective than force.
When someone sells you on the dream the fantasies, it’s dangerous.
4) Other People Have the Same Limitations As You
We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Yet, how can others achieve overnight success while you can’t? Think about it. It doesn’t make sense. When others achieved massive, unreachable success in years, if not decades, then that’s another thing. But in 24 hours when you literally had the exact same 24 hours?
What different words did they speak in that one day that made that big of a difference? What different choices did they make in that single day that made that big of a difference? It logically and literally doesn’t make sense. Are they really that special enough to have that superhuman ability? I don’t think so.
While humans have different genetic material, we’re, in general, the same. People generally have 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. etc. with exceptions here and there. So when you have the same tools could someone really be that far ahead of you when you’re in the same race? That doesn’t sound right to me and it shouldn’t sound right to you.
Don’t Try for Overnight Success
There are many people who try for overnight success and risk it all on a single action. As a result, they end up taking more debt than they could afford. Or they could go far what their bodily limitations tell them. Instead of giving up, they continue to push forward without understanding the consequences.
When I was in high school, I played in tennis tournaments. In one tennis tournament, I had leg cramps. They gave me pickle juice and gatorade and I felt like magic afterwards. What I didn’t know was that playing through the leg cramps was a very bad decision.
I was risking permanent muscle failure for a high school tennis tournament that literally has no impact to my life right now. I pushed farther than I should have. Our school ended up winning that tournament due to me continuing to push forward, but it still wasn’t worth it. That’s me trying to push to hard and going for glory when I shouldn’t have.
I get it. Overnight success has a lot of pride and glory within it. People are going to want to know you and give you attention. However, chances are greater that you won’t be an overnight success than the chances are that you will. And not just by a little bit but by a very very wide margin that it’s not even worth it.
Then you’ll have to start back on square one. All of the choices you made in the past, poof, gone, just like that. You want to build your future, not skip to the ending in one day. How badly constructed would your house be if construction works just cut corners and tried to build in one day?
Very badly constructed. Trying for overnight success does more harm than good.
Be Skeptical of Overnight Success Stories
So now, I hope you are skeptical of overnight success stories. How overnight success stories does exist but aren’t actually the definition of “overnight success”. Yes, they did achieve good things with their lives, however, they did not achieve it sitting around in the couch and then the next day they show up successful.
Be very skeptical when others use this wording. They may just want your attention to drive up ad revenue or to sell you a course later down the road. Overnight success stories does not exist. If the definition of success is first time lottery winners, then fine, it exists for that small subset of examples.
However, for all other definitions of success, it doesn’t exist. Fast success like the overnight lottery winner is the exception, not the rule. When I was into chess, it took me after school team practices to get to a “good level”. Then I went home, studied past chess games, and played against others online even more. Hours and hours more.
It took me 6 years of playing before I finally “got it”. Before I knew what worked and what didn’t and how to tell whether I’m good or not. Of knowing my place in relation to my opponent. That’s when I had time to think about other things than just what my next move should be.
You can only know the intricate details of knowing how to be great after being put in countless scenarios that you haven’t seen before. Scenarios that forces you to think about how to come out ahead out of the entire situation. That can only happen over time and as you experience more things in the world.
Best Successes are Built Over Time
Most FIRE bloggers that you see achieved the millionaire status in their 30’s. Even rarer in their late 20’s. That’s the best kind of success out there. The ones that took years and decades to achieve. Why? It has the highest chances of completion. Even if you want to fast track your wealth through entrepreneurship, it still takes time to get there.
The saying is that you work hard for 10 years and then you become an overnight success. That people only really care the most about your tipping point than in your buildup. It takes routine daily work to build up your dream life. You have to rinse and repeat for numerous years before you see progress that you like.
You don’t need to take on a million dollars worth of debt and try to find the cryptocurrency. It’s more likely you won’t find the next hottest cryptocurrency than that you will find the next hottest cryptocurrency. When you consistently save and invest significant money, there’s little doubt in my mind that you won’t become wealthy.
It’s those little decisions and habits that you employ every single day that makes all the difference in the world. After years and decades of those efforts is when you see who consistently made the wrong choices and who made the right choices. Try to get there with shortcuts and you will sacrifice something along the way.
Now, if you find a good shortcut with zero repercussions or downsides, then by all means, go for it. Take the easy way out, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if there are downsides, then it’s better to build it up over time. Then you can reminisce and think about how you thought it was even hard in the first place.
