There’s an old saying:
The more I look around, the more I realize that very few people reach success in a big, shining moment of good fortune. They don’t win the lottery. They don’t have a flash of genius. They don’t get discovered. There’s no lucky break just around the corner.
A Milestone
I’ve been writing this blog for about two years now. This is my 174th post. Today I woke up at 5:00am, hours before I need to leave for work, wrote, and shared something for the 174th time. Most of those posts got less than 10 views. Some got zero. Yet I continued to write, continued digging the well.
Last week, my website reached a milestone: 100 unique visitors viewed my blog at tonyferrar.com.
A New Trend
Here’s the activity at my site for the last 6 weeks:
Two Lessons
First, the attention on my site is directly proportional to my own engagement. I was on vacation during the week of August 13.
Second, growth happens when I do whatever it is I was doing during the other weeks. So what was that?
I Reached Critical Mass
With 174 posts, I can share something every day – even if I don’t write a new post. For the last 6 weeks, I shared a post each day (not on vacation). One link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and SnapChat (@TheTonyFerrar).
Drinking the Water
Investing in the future isn’t easy. It usually looks like sacrifice with little immediate reward. Yet many aspects of our lives work just like this blog:
- Your professional network. You can’t build it the week before career fair (or graduation). A network is built day in, day out, one new meaningful connection at a time. Go find someone today. Repeat tomorrow.
- Your wealth. You won’t strike it rich in one big deal (unlikely anyhow). Deposit a little regularly, and you’ll wake up wealthy one day.
- Your health. Crash diets and 90-day plans don’t work (at least not sustainably). Yet a little conscious effort each day to eat well and move around a little will add years of quality to your life.
We love the myth of an overnight success
When we see someone “make it big” it feeds the belief that we could, too. It lets us deflect the blame – we just haven’t had our break yet. The truth is much more mundane:
“Work hard for ten years and become an overnight success.”
– Dave Ramsey
Dig Your Well
The trick is to commit to digging. Day in and day out. You won’t always see results. In fact you usually won’t. You’ll feel like stopping – don’t.
Feeling like it’s too late? There’s another saying:
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best is today.”
