Everything Truly Worth Doing Takes Longer Than You Expect

I have been a late bloomer in nearly every aspect of my life:

By the time my first traditionally published book came out, I’d been doing creative for close to 7 years, and I was 38 years old.

If you talk to anybody who has accomplished anything of great significance, you’ll discover that it takes far longer than they think it will.

Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.” This is borrowed from the wise and wonderful Debbie Millman, for it’s hard to better capture something so fundamental yet so impatiently overlooked in our culture of immediacy. The myth of the overnight success is just that — a myth — as well as a reminder that our present definition of success needs serious retuning. As I’ve reflected elsewhere, the flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming. But that’s where all the real magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny. — Maria Popova

One of the greatest myths of our culture is the one of the I’ve made it moment. Because we only see an outcome, we overlook the process that went into achieving that outcome.

By the time a professional athlete makes it to the league, they’ve been playing their sport for multiple decades. Thousands of hours of practice have gone into what they’re doing. Tom Brady is exemplary of this kind of dedication. When his college coach called someone on the New England Patriots, he told them “you’ll never regret drafting Tom Brady.” Despite being Drew Henson’s back up at Michigan, he still worked his ass off and was responsible for several late-game comebacks. Despite being a 6th round draft pick, he walked up to Bob Craft on the first day of practice and said: “Mr. Kraft, my name is Tom Brady, and I’m going the best decision you’ve ever made.” At the time, he was not even second string. The “I’ve made it moment” was years on end of showing up to practice and busting his ass so that he was prepared when opportunity knocked. It’s safe to say that part of what made him into the quarterback that he is today is a focus on the process instead of the prize

Sometime last week a friend called me to ask about starting a podcast. Many people in his life were encouraging that it was something he should do. He asked me for tactics, and I didn’t have any. But I gave him two simple, but hard to follow pieces of advice:

Focusing on mastery instead of metrics means doing little things repeatedly. It means reviewing your work, being critical of it, and looking for ways to improve it. To this day, I still listen to every interview I publish multiple times. I’m not looking for what I did well. I’m looking for what I could have done better.

For example, a few weeks ago I noticed another one of my filler phrases. “That raises lots of questions.” I realized it was a completely unnecessary statement. If I didn’t say it, my transition from dialogue to question would be much more seamless.

The Dip is one of Seth Godin’s shortest yet most insightful books. It’s about quitting. If you do anything for a long enough time, two things will happen.

After what seemed like a rocket ride to the moon in 2013, the year that followed I had one of the worst years of my life. Financial losses, friendships ending, and one setback after another made me think that I should quit. Anything truly worth doing will have a dip and obstacles. Often people quit right before the inflection point. And inflection points usually occur right after the dip.

There are also plenty of times when it makes sense to quit. When I was in 7th grade, I had the genius idea of going out for the football team. I lived in Texas, so it was the thing to do. But as a skinny Indian, I made for little more than a fantastic tackling dummy. I would likely never be Tom Brady. My band director then gave me a choice: be an average athlete or an extraordinary musician. The following year I didn’t go out for football, and I made all-state band 3 of the 4 years I was in high school. It was worth quitting football.

All of us have had one of those days when we check email first thing in the morning, followed by a peek at Facebook, followed by an Instagram upload. We rinse, wash, and repeat only to get to the end of they wondering where the time we went. When it comes to our digital lives, the overwhelming majority of our waking hours are the antithesis of time well spent.

We’re more connected yet more isolated than we’ve ever been. We are in the words of Sherry Turtle alone together. Facebook friends are not viable substitutes for real ones. Online communities, while beautiful can’t replace our need for human contact. My friend Mike once asked me what the ratio was of human to online contact. I was kind of horrified when realized how out of whack that ratio was.

I’ve said before that when you’re stuck mentally, you should move physically. Exercise doesn’t just give you more energy. Regular exercise is a keystone habit that creates a ripple effect. You eat healthier food. It alleviates symptoms of depression and increases the quality of your sleep.

The internet has given us access to a fountain of knowledge that ancient philosophers could only dream about. They would likely be appalled at the wasted potential of the internet. Between TEDTalks, Podcasts, and platforms like CreativeLive we have a vast fountain of knowledge at our disposal. Learning something new and useful with it is time well spent.

Instead of asking ourselves what we got done on a given day, perhaps we should be asking if our time was well spent. Everything worth doing might take longer than you think it will. But if its’ time well spent, you’ll have no regrets.

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