#033 – Overnight Successes & The 24-Hour-You

Quote, Podcast, Deep Dive, Hack, Tweet.

Author

Dimitri Gremos
October 25, 2023

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Bringing 5 interesting ideas to your inbox every Thursday morning to ignite your curiosity and drive your growth.

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read time 3 minutes 

#033 at a Glance:

  • Quote that will get you thinking: To live is to choose, but to choose well...

  • Podcast you should listen to: The Shocking Lessons from History Everyone Has Forgotten.

  • Deep Dive: Debunking Overnight Successes.

  • Hack you should try: The 24-Hour-You.

  • Tweet I liked: Why Success is a Lagging Indicator.

Quote that will get you thinking:

“To live is to choose, but to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for. Where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

Kofi Annan

Podcast you should listen to:

Modern Wisdom #675 - Niall Ferguson - The Shocking Lessons of History Everyone Has Forgotten

Niall Ferguson is a historian, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution & Stanford University, and an author.

We often hear that history tends to repeat itself. But if you're a professional historian, just how accurate is that statement? What are the big lessons that we keep missing? And how doomed is our future if we don’t learn from the past?

Expect to learn why history doesn’t repeat itself (but it does rhyme), why everyone should read more history, the biggest lessons most people keep ignoring, and much more.

Listen on Spotify here. Listen on Apple Podcasts here. Watch on YouTube here.

I really enjoyed this episode. It’s actually one of the main reasons why I’ve started delving into history a lot more. Here are some of the books I’ve been flicking through lately:

Deep Dive:

Debunking Overnight Successes 

I came across a brilliant thought from Zach Pogrob this week about the idea of overnight successes:

"Every overnight success is either a decade of playing the game or a decade of searching for what game to play. Either way, it usually takes 10 years."

With the rise of social media and 'influencer gurus' it seems as though everyone is an immediate success – the truth is, however, that nothing could be further from reality.

Let's explore some examples of people that we've all heard of:

  • Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. After operating the company at a loss for several years, it wasn't until the mid-2000s (almost a decade later) that the company began to experience significant profitability and cemented its position as the dominant player in the e-commerce industry.

  • Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook (which he originally named "The Facebook") in 2004 and worked tirelessly building the company and its users for many years. It wasn't until May 2012 that Facebook had its IPO and began to become the global powerhouse it is today.

  • From a sporting perspective, let’s look at Ange Postecoglou and his recent leap into the English Premier League. It’s easy to think of his meteoric rise to European football as an ‘overnight success’ but nothing could be further from the truth. His incredible move to Tottenham Hotspur has come 27 years into his managerial career after working with 10 teams across 4 different countries.

These are just 3 examples from a long, long list that emphasise this exact point:

Overnight successes rarely (if ever) occur. The facade portrayed by many people on social media is merely that; a facade.

Keep working, keep pushing, keep innovating.

Your time is coming.

Hack you should try:

The 24-Hour-You

A tool to optimise short and long-term decision-making.

Whenever faced with a choice of action or a decision to be made, first ask yourself:

What would the 'me' of tomorrow want the 'me' of today to do?

This removes the emotion and intensity from certain decisions allowing you to view the consequences through a more rational and considered lens. It rips you out of the present and allows you to think more clearly.

I’ve found this simple hack extremely helpful over the last few weeks when faced with any sort of decision.

Give it a go.

(h/t @chriswillx)

Tweet I liked:

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, & stay curious. ⚡

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