When I was younger, I was obsessed with replicating the success of others. I wanted to build an app that got millions of users, write an influential blog that is read by many or become prominent person in some way. Now that I'm older I haven't given up that obsession but I realized one thing about success: it takes a ton of time.

There are very few overnight successes these days, and the successes that look like they happened "overnight" seldomly did. OpenAI seems like it was an overnight success with ChatGPT but when you look at their wikipedia page, you will notice that they actually started in 2015, 8 years ago as of this writing. The same can be said for many other successful companies, though a company may appear to just burst onto the scene suddenly, look closer and you will almost always see that they have been grinding for years before they finally became prominent.

The same thing can be said for celebrities, everyone is talking about Taylor Swift these days and how mega-successful she has become, but one must remember that she started her career in 2004, 20 years ago as of this writing and is just now becoming the mega celebrity that everyone knows.

Looking at all of this I've come up with a "10 year rule", that is you can achieve success with almost anything if you put the right amount of time into it, and the time it typically takes to achieve success is 10 years. It might only take you 7 or it might take you 15, but for the most part if you look at the most successful individuals and companies out there these days, they have been at it for about a decade.

If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self I would give one piece of advice:

"Don't fret, find something you love doing and then grind, grind more and then grind some more, and maybe you will achieve success by the time you turn 30"