The Myth Of The Overnight Success

The Internet moves at warp speed. Today’s news is old by tomorrow. We live in a “now” era. And everybody is competing to be the “new new thing” in order to get the press and the notoriety and the adulation. Everyone wants to be an overnight success.

But that rarely happens. When we think of someone as an overnight success it almost always takes them years to succeed. There are lessons to be learned and dues to be paid before one becomes a success.

The Beatles burst onto the world in 1964 when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, which led to Beatlemania, but in truth they had been preparing for that moment since 1958. As Malcolm Gladwell says, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly proficient at anything.

Of course, like everything else in life, there are exceptions to this rule. Justin Bieber was “discovered” on the Internet and became an overnight success. There’s always someone who wins the Lottery. But you can’t go through life expecting that will happen to you.

So the next time that you experience the “new new thing'', bear in mind that while it may be new to you in reality it’s most likely been bubbling underneath the surface for quite some time.