Does "overnight success" really exist?
There seem to be people who make meteoric rises. One day they're nobody. The next day they're a household name.
It appears that way, but more often than not a lot of work went on behind the scenes.
Everyone wants to be successful, but few are willing to do what it takes to succeed. While it will take some time and effort to make major progress, it doesn't have to take forever.
There are some ways to speed up the process and become successful quickly. You don't have to toil away for 10,000 hours before you accomplish something significant. If you follow these strategies you'll be well on your way to living a successful life in record time.
Success Is A Series Of Steps
Wait a minute -- this post was supposed to be about how to achieve success quickly, what gives?
Taking things step by step will lead to massive success if you're consistent. If you consciously spend each day trying to improve yourself and your craft you will take a massive leap at some point.
The problem most people have is inconsistency. If you aren't consistent, you won't build a solid foundation to be able to make giant leaps forward
Let's say you want to be a writer. Many successful writers will tell you the key to being a great writer is building a consistent writing habit. But most people will attempt writing this way -- they'll try to "fit it in," here and there. They'll write non stop for a couple of days then take weeks off before they write again.
The same thought process can be used in any area. Inconsistency will kill your chances of being successful. Slow and steady and incessant wins the race.
Research, Front Load Your Work, Iterate
Many make the mistake of falling in love with their idea and ignoring whether or not their product or service is something people actually want.
This is the type of person who comes up with a business idea and immediately buys business cards, throws up a website, and believes people will flock to it.
Rule number one for creating a successful business, getting your idea to spread, or building a following -- nobody cares about you.
It's great that you want to follow your passion, but you need to make sure what you're offering fits a market need.
Yes, Steve Jobs had the magical ability to predict what consumer wanted before they knew it themselves. But you're not Steve Jobs.
So where do you go to do research? Here are a few options:
- Quora -- Quora is a platform where people asks questions publicly and anyone can answer them. It's a gold mine for researching the hopes, fears, and dreams of your target audience.
The next step is front loading the work. Front loading means you do a large amount of work in the beginning that pays major dividends later on.
What do most people do? They rush. They put inferior work out there that could have been improved.
Instead of writing ten blog posts that take an hour a piece. Write one blog post that takes ten hours to write. People can tell the difference between a methodical masterpiece and a cobbled together piece of junk.
You want to be word class in everything you do. It's the only way to stand out in a sea of noise, charlatans, and average people.
Whatever you're trying to create, spend 10 times the amount time in the initial phases in order to achieve 100 times the results.
The final step is to iterate. You've done your research, you've front loaded the work, and now it's time to unveil your product, service, or piece of work. The caveat to this process is that it may not be as well received as you imagined it to be. That's okay. Take the feedback you receive and use it to make your product even better.
One of the major mistakes people make is failing to listen. They take things personally when their ideas aren't well-received. They don't learn from past mistakes to build a better future.
Paying attention to feedback and taking action to improved based on that feedback will make you succeed much quicker.
Find A Mentor or Hire A Coach
Finding a mentor may be the best way to shorten your learning curve and make massive leaps in progress. If you learn from someone who has experience in your field you can avoid potential pitfalls you may have encountered had you not had a mentor guiding you.
The second option involves paying someone to teach you what they know. Many people scoff at the idea of paying for coaching, but those types of people aren't high performers.
The best athletes in the world pay for top trainers and coaches during the off season. Your favorite singer has a vocal coach. Top leaders and CEOs of companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for consulting and coaching to take their businesses to the next level.
Successful people invest in themselves and their future. Unsuccessful people are cynical and worried about getting "scammed," even though the society they live in has been pulling the wool over their eyes for years.
You could spend hours on end searching for free information on the internet, but you're actually spending something more valuable than money -- your time. Smart people seek out even smarter people to help them.
The Truth About Becoming Successful Quickly
There is no "magic bullet," solution to becoming successful. You can, however, become successful in a relatively short amount of time. When I use the word quickly I'm comparing a couple of years to a lifetime of mediocrity and lack of achievement.
3 to 5 years isn't a long time. If you knew that your success was guaranteed if you put in 3 to 5 years of work would you follow through? I'm sure you would. It's the uncertainty that holds you back.
The best solution to curing self-doubt and wondering "what if" is to work. If you want to be successful twice as fast, work twice as hard and twice as smart.
You might be worried about wasting time, but ironically, if you're not working towards something your time's already being wasted.
The same progress can happen for you if you would only get started.
Is today your day?
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