The myth of the overnight success, paying attention and 43-year-old white men
Stories I’ve loved on Medium this week — 25.09.16
I’ve read a lot on Medium this week. Not because I’ve had more time to consume — I really haven’t — but because there has been some seriously fantastic stuff put out over the past seven days. I just couldn’t stop reading.
Today, then, I’m sharing six stories with y’all.
None are super lengthy pieces — you could get them all read in 20/25 minutes — but they’re brilliantly insightful.
Enjoy.
If you’re an entrepreneur, whether that means being a freelancer or a small business owner or a tech founder, you aren’t going to suddenly achieve massive success out of nowhere when you have a big breakthrough moment. It’s way more likely that you will work your ass off for years before anything big happens. That’s okay.
Gary Vaynerchuk bangs on about this this all the time — The Breakout Myth, The Overnight Success Story — but this piece by Jon Westenberg frames the issue in a much more approachable way.
If you want to know how many times Milton Hershey failed before finally starting Hershey’s Chocolates, and be reminded that patience and hard work are major keys to success, this one’s for you.
I have a friend who wants to write a novel badly. He believes it could be his way out of the corporate job he loathes so much.
So during his free time, he pays attention to Netflix, he pays attention to games on his phone, and he pays attention to answering emails for the job he hates so much. He pays attention to everything his boss has done to annoy him that day.
I’ve touched on this issue before in previous Chapters here and here; the issue of how to spend your time and energy.
For many, it’s binging on Netflix series, scrolling through Facebook, playing games or sitting in the pub. A lot of these people then complain that they don’t enjoy their job or state with confidence that they’ll one day be millionaires. Boy, have Todd Brison and I got news for you.
Your attention is precious. Don’t give it all to shit that won’t get you any further in life than where you are right now.
Life is experimentation. Certainly there are boundaries to this (I’ve been writing nearly every day for the last 6 years), but you are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to quit things. Quitting is underrated.
Writing is my passion, I know that for sure. I mean, anything I’m happy to do every day has to mean something to me, right?
Right.
But it didn’t used to be that way.
I’ve always been good at writing. English was my subject, Maths was not. I prefer words to numbers. Words are my life and they’re my 1%.
Before I started putting out words on a daily basis though, writing was something I knew I did well but it wasn’t something I was truly, deeply passionate about.
Now that I’m doing it every day, working deeper in to the craft and learning more about it, writing has slowly become the overwhelming passion of my life.
And it’s because, as Todd Brison (yes, again) says in this story, passion is earned not chosen.
You need to work damn hard at what you’re interested in before you know if it’s a passion.
Interest > A WHOLE lot of activity > Passion (maybe)
I) Don’t forget that you are just planting seeds now. A garden can’t grow if you don’t water it. Learn, listen, love.
My week has been stupidly busy, and writing fell by the wayside a bit from Monday until Friday. Reading did too.
That meant I utterly despised last week, because if I have a limited amount of time to read and write then my time is wasted.
But, luckily, this James Altucher story came at the exact right time. I’m not even 22 yet and most of his post still seriously resonated with me.
It’s okay to take your time when you’re only 22.
Martha Stewart Still Confused About What 43-Year-Old White Men Are Exactly
— Vanity Fair
Not a lot to say about this one from Amanda Rosenberg. It’s simply hilarious.
Whether you’re building an app, writing blog posts, or making energy bars in your kitchen, you need to become a connoisseur. If you don’t know — inside-out — the experience of anticipating, purchasing, using, and reflecting upon that thing, you have no hope of crafting that experience for others.
As more and more people decide that they want to own and run a business, we’re seeing a ridiculous amount of startups pop up that clearly aren’t ready for any form of trading.
Why? Because not enough research has been done. These startup founders have said “Right, I can do this better” about a product of service and dived headfirst in to the business world.
The thing they haven’t first done, David Kadavy says, is become a connoisseur of what they’re selling.
