Being an overnight success is a myth.

You can get famous or, more often, infamous, overnight. But you don’t get successful that quickly.

Unfortunately, we’re flooded with stories about people who are younger and less experienced than us who are making millions and achieving all of their goals.

The stories make us feel like failures.

We’ve been working hard for years.

Where’s our success?

What these overnight success stories don’t highlight is how long it really took.

It doesn’t show the months and years of failures that lead up to this moment. And it doesn’t show the sacrifices made in order to reach these goals.

Sure, some people are lucky.

But luck has many sides.

Naval Ravikant talks about the four types of luck.

This was originally written by Dr. James H. Austin in 1978.

1. Blind luck
2. Luck from motion
3. Luck in preparation
4. Luck unique to you

When we talk about someone being lucky, we usually mean the first one.

Blind luck is outside of our control.

The other three are the ones we want to focus on.

Someone I follow on LinkedIn talks about increasing your luck surface area. I love that idea.

It means doing things in a way that increases your chances that luck will find you. This relates more to the next three types of luck.

Luck from motion comes from years of putting in the work.

If you release 100 songs over 5 years, your chances of a hit are better than if you release 5 in a week.

The more you show up consistently, the better your chances are of being in the right place at the right time.

Luck in preparation means you have a better idea of what will and won’t work.

If you’re an expert in your field, you already know which paths have a better shot at success.

For example, if you worked for a number of tech startups, you might recognize a new one that has big potential.

Choosing to invest in it early doesn’t guarantee success, but your experience improves your luck.

Luck unique to you is about the reputation you build over time.

If you are known for being a trusted advisor, more people will want to work with you.

As this reputation grows, so will the number of offers and the size of the deals.

The chances that Elon Musk emails me with an offer to invest in his next company are pretty slim.

But someone who has worked with him for years and has been a reliable business partner will get that opportunity.

It’s still luck in the sense that they didn’t seek out the opportunities. But their luck surface area was much larger because of their history.

So, instead of relying on luck, what’s a better way to become an over-many-nights success?

Getting 1% better

I love this concept.

I first read about it in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.

I think the people reading this can appreciate the value of compound interest. Just like with investing, continuous improvement can cause an exponential change in your situation. Good and bad.

Here’s a graph that shows the difference.

The graph shows that by improving something by 1% every day for a year, it becomes 37x better than when you started.

Monumental changes are next to impossible in the short term.

You can’t learn a new language overnight.

But adding 1% more to your vocabulary each day adds up quickly.

By the end of the year, you will know so much more than if you tried to cram it all in over a week or two.

And it’s manageable.

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Compounding also plays a role in learning.

You don’t need to spend 1% more time each day.

The math just wouldn’t work out. If you worked on something for one hour per day on Day 1, you’d have to spend 37 hours per day on Day 365

Once you grasp the fundamentals, you start picking up new concepts in less time.

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An alternative to resolutions.

New Year’s is just around the corner.

And, with it, is the terrible tradition of the New Year’s resolution.

That time of year when we promise ourselves to get in shape, read more, and generally get our lives back on track.

And then feel like crap a week later when none of it worked out.

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I suggest an alternative this time.

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My first suggestion is to avoid January 1st as the start date for any plans.

Either start today or wait until after the holidays when your schedule is a bit more consistent.

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Next, pick one thing you want to improve. Not ten.

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And just spend time working on it every day.

Nothing crazy to start.

It has to be an amount of effort that’s attainable on your worst days.

But if you miss a day, don’t worry about it.

The reason we give up on resolutions is that we set unrealistic goals.

And we make them all-or-nothing.

We miss one day for a legit reason and throw in the towel.

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This year, I made a conscious effort to show up more on social media.

I had neglected that side of my business for years.

So, I wanted to get back out there and grow the business.

My goal was just to post something every day.

It wasn’t to write the best post ever created.

Or to write ten posts across seven platforms.

Just write something and post it every day.

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Did I miss a day? Tons.

I had some work deadlines that threw me off schedule.

People got sick. Plans changed at the last minute.

You know, life.

But more often than not, I posted something.

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This newsletter is a prime example.

I was terribly inconsistent last year.

But today’s newsletter is the 25th in a row that I’ve sent.

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It’s been the same on social media.

If I zoom into any one day, it’s not a lot to cheer about.

It’s a few hundred words that fewer than a few hundred people read.

But over the past six months, it’s hundreds of posts.

And a 300% increase in followers on some platforms.

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And, to be honest, the first few months were pretty bad.

I was pretty rusty. A lot has changed since the last time I did this regularly.

It took a few months of being really uncomfortable.

Now that 1% is starting to compound.

Most of the growth has happened in the past month or two.

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Whatever you’ve been wanting to improve, go for it.

It just gets harder the longer you wait.

I promise the Dec 2024 version of you will look back and thank you for getting started today.

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What are you going to get 1% better at?

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I’d love to hear your stories.

Let me know what you’ve got planned.

Better yet, share your progress online.

There is someone out there a few steps behind you.

They don’t know where to get started and could really use your advice.

By learning and building in public, you can make a huge impact on someone else’s life.

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Resources:

The four kinds of luck - https://www.wealest.com/articles/four-kinds-of-luck​

Continuous improvement - https://jamesclear.com/continuous-improvement​

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