Too many people underestimate the timeline of success. Many people get frustrated with how long it takes to be successful and give up just when the going is about to get good. It’s absolutely normal to do the same things over and over again for two years before getting results.
MrBeast, arguably the most successful YouTuber in the history of YouTube, took four YEARS before his channel even started to become successful. He even left his home in order to make his dreams a reality. Even when he was making nothing, he reinvested everything back into the business.
The success timeline takes a very long path and not many are patient enough to stick with it over the long term. They think six months is a good amount of effort to put into a venture before giving up. That’s not even close. Six months isn’t even the start.
It’s been two years since I took my blog seriously and I’m still operating at a loss. Imagine putting two years of your life into something and it actually returns negative dollars. That’s frustrating, yes. However, it just shows how much slow progress takes.
Timeline of success takes much longer than anything thinks. Even the coveted millionaire status isn’t done in just five years. Most take decades to get there. The average age of millionaires is 57 years old. Fifty seven years old. Most give up before even getting there.
The perfection of your craft takes about 10 years, on average.
Why 10 Years is the Timeline of Success
The first reason why 10 years is the typical timeline of success is because you’re not SMASHING that social share button! Your friends could be impatient and be wanting to give up too quickly just when they’re about to make some major breakthrough.
So with that said, let’s go over the reasons why 10 years is the timeline to success. It just takes longer than you think.
1) Mastery Takes Years
10 years is when mastery happens. 10 years is when you are used to the things that you have to do. The 10,000 hours rule is a common rule for a reason. It makes sense. That’s about five years worth of work on a standard 40 hours per week workweek. After five years is when you start mastery.
There is nothing that I feel like I mastered something in just a single year’s worth of time. It takes at least two to three years before I feel comfortable and even bored with the subject and in the fourth year is when everything runs like clockwork.
Timeline of success is measured in years. There’s too many people who give up after six months when six months isn’t even the start. Even if you have passion for the subject and it consumes your life. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how many hours are you willing to put in the work for.
2) Talent is Nurtured
Natural talent is the most overrated thing ever because it doesn’t exist. There is no great person in the world who got there through sheer talent alone. They needed effort on top of their talent. If talent is all it took, there would be more people who are great, because we all have one form of talent.
However, there’s a reason why hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard. Effort, practice, and hard work will be what makes all the difference in the world in five years’ time. It’s one thing to have momentum to get there to be successful.
it’s another thing to actually realize that potential and momentum down the road. There’s a difference between everyone else thinking that you are successful and whether or not you are actually successful. Many people love to use social media to filter their life.
That shouldn’t be you, using filters to make your life better. Your life should actually be great.
3) The First Years Are Just to Get Used to It
The first year isn’t even to get to the top. The first year is for you to adjust to the new environment. Whenever you start a new job, you don’t spend the first year to take over your boss’ job by the next year. You spend the first year learning the processes and meeting coworkers.
Timeline of success is a slow start. Then it starts to snowball down into further successes and mountains of success. It takes an obscene amount of time to adjust to a new environment for you to figure out how to get to the top, let alone be good at your craft.
Everything is new to you. It took me two years to even start understanding how Twitter works. It’s one thing to know how Twitter works but it’s a whole other ball game to actually understand how Twitter works. And even after understanding, it may not even be that easy.
Time is the biggest cost to greatness but it’s well worth the price.
Don’t Let Anyone Else Dictate Your Timeline of Success
Warren Buffett lagged the S&P 500’s performance in 2020. Does he care? No. He beat the index for 12 straight years between 1999 and 2020. That’s a great track record to showcase his genius investing skills. He doesn’t care to shorten the timeline because that’s how you get burned.
There’s no need to compare your timeline against someone else’s. Don’t let someone else dictate your timeline of success. It’s your timeline. You’re not late, you’re not early, you’re getting there just in time. When you try to fast track your way to success, you may end up losing everything.
Impatience is what destroys people’s successes, not their effort. Delayed gratification is easy to understand but hard to implement in practice. It’s taken me six years in my financial independence journey and I’m nowhere near complete. I’m not even halfway to completion.
That’s completely OK. I am not going to try to rush it because I have my whole life ahead of me. The timeline of success is a long journey and it may even make it even longer if you rush it. By making risky bets, you have a chance of losing everything.
Why risk something that you know you were already on your way to achieve? It doesn’t make any sense. The timeline of success is something that should be comforting to you, not to anybody else. You’re doing it for yourself and no one else, anyway.
Timeline of Success has Many Bumps in the Road
I thought that 2022 was going to be my year. I got a great new job and my net worth was nearing all time highs because the stock market yielded great returns in 2021. However, the bear market of 2022 had other plans. My net worth took a huge hit during the bear market.
Therefore, I don’t think I’ll reach my goals until 2024 or even 2025. I am completely OK with that. I am looking at my life like the long term goal that it’s supposed to be. Your timeline of success will change many times throughout your life. Some milestones come sooner than others.
That’s the design. Success is not a straight line. There will be many bumps in the road and many problems during your journey to riches and achieving your goals. The one who solves those problems are the ones who makes it by the end.
Timeline of success is going to be difficult and there will be many times when you want to quit. I thought I was over wanting to quit when I consistently implemented my financial independence plan all the way up to the sixth year.
However, even after you think you are over thinking about quitting, they have a way of coming back.
You never know when those feelings are going to come back, either. Be prepared for them because it’s going to hit you when you least expect it. You think the bad times won’t hit until they do. I know because I was licking my wounds in 2022. That was the lowest I’ve ever felt in the journey.
Your Timeline of Success Needs a Plan
You will never meet your plan’s goals to its perfection. That’s not how life works. Sometimes, things just happen that are beyond your control. However, having a general direction and plan where you’re going to really matters in the long run. Without a plan, you don’t know where you’re going.
Even if you never meet the timeline of success to your exact plan, at least you’re still making progress. Progress is what’s going to make you happy. Being stuck makes you feel miserable. I had a plan to reach half a million dollars in 2022. However, that plan is long gone right now.
However, that’s OK. I’m still at a better place than I was 3 years ago. There is a chance that I could end up in a worse place than 3 years ago, so I’m preparing myself so that I don’t get there. I’m preparing myself with a year long+ emergency fund.
I’m answering all of my boss’ emails in a timely manner so that I am dedicated to the job. If there’s additional projects that I can take on, I take on those additional projects. I’m working harder on my side hustle of this blog and my Twitter. There are many things I’m doing to position myself to succeed.
Your timeline of success needs a plan and execution in order to get there. Without execution, ideas and plans are worthless. Even if you don’t progress as quickly as you would like, as long as you’re getting there, everything is going to be just fine.
Track Milestones for Success Timeline
When it comes to the timeline of success, you will crush many milestones on your way to get there. The milestones can be from how long something could take to what you will achieve by a certain year. However way you want to define your milestone, you want to track them.
For me, personally, the next biggest milestone for me is $500,000. That’s the biggest hurdle that I want to break because that’s the milestone that’s going to make me feel secure. That’s a risk free $20,000 per year that I get to spend, if I want to.
I generally spend between $20,000 – $25,000 per year. I can only imagine being able to spend that without lifting another finger at my day job! Because I love my job so much, I don’t think that that will change anytime soon. However, it would be nice to have the option to.
I don’t think I will want to stop before reaching my financial independence number of $1,000,000. I can only imagine how much better reaching that milestone will be but I suspect it will only take me around five additional years for me to get there.
Your timeline of success has many milestones while on the way to get to where you want to be. You celebrate those achievements because they were completely achieved through your own efforts and thinking. That’s something to celebrate and be happy about.
You’re Not Early or Too Late, You’re Just In Time
Too many people compare themselves to others and think “oh man, I’m too late”. Nope, that’s not the right way to look at it. You’re not going on their schedule. You’re going on your schedule, which could be earlier or later than someone else’s schedule.
Heck, other people may even be jealous of you! There are many single people who look at married couples and think they should have been married already. Nope. Those same married couple may be looking at you and regret that they married so young.
You dictate your timeline of success. No one else dictates it for you. Other people only dictate it only if you let them dictate it by buying into lies that perpetuates even further due to social media. Remember, Jeff Bezos didn’t have a lot of money to start Amazon at 30.
He had to rely on his parents’ funds in order to start up Amazon. And he became the richest person in the entire world at one point. Think of how many friends he had who got married by 28, who was richer than Jeff, or any number of a hundred other things they were surpassing Jeff on.
Your timeline of success is on your time and your time only. Anyone else’s time is meaningless. There are many multimillionaires I’ve met who wanted to be a millionaire by 30 but only got there by 36. These long term goals just take time to get there. The last missing ingredient.
