"Nothing Happens Overnight"
A new essay by Shane Snow.
Last week, I got a bad email about a business matter that’s important to me. I called my lawyer, all riled up. I monologued to him about this other person’s dishonesty, our grounds for legal action, blah blah. And I ended with, “So what happens now?”
His reply: “Well the good news is nothing happens overnight.”
How could this be good news? I thought. This was unjust and needed to be resolved.
I was angry.
He said it again: “Nothing happens overnight.”
In the days since, these three words have rattled around my brain like a kidney stone. (Which I literally also had rattling around my body this week—I don’t wish it on even the guy who sent me the bad email!)
And I’ve realized that what my lawyer said is profoundly correct. Not just about the business matter—which he is right about, by the way. Trying to take care of important things in HASTE is exactly what a good lawyer, a good friend, or a good mentor will tell you NOT to do.
Taking time to think and breathe before we take action is the difference between working hard and working smart.
(Or as I like to say: Great work is 1/3 exploring, 1/3 thinking, and 1/3 doing!)
But more broadly, “nothing happens overnight” applies in many other places in life.
We see an actor suddenly become a megastar. To us it happens overnight. But to Zoe Saldana, there were decades of unseen hard work in ballet, before gruelling auditions that finally led to a part in a movie about ballet. Then after a brutal filming schedule, and two years of waiting for the film to come out, meanwhile she continues auditioning and hustling for roles… we all see a young star emerge out of nowhere, and in haste, we might call it unfair.
But nothing happens overnight.
A large part of my book Smartcuts deals with this idea that “rapid” success from an outside point of view is usually a product of lots of work in one arena that then gets leveraged to do something big and splashy in another arena. From the outside it appears instant, or too soon, or too lucky. Fallon. Skrillex. SpaceX. And much of it is lucky. But none of it’s overnight.
The Double Rainbow man got instantly famous from a single Youtube video. And then his fame evaporated in months. A Youtuber named Michelle Phan who went viral the very same month stayed famous and built a real business off her newfound fame, precisely because she had spent years posting quality videos and honing a real craft before her apparent sudden success.
Nothing happens overnight.
The dot-com bubble burst seemingly instantly. But it didn’t happen overnight. Just like a wildfire will at some point burn through the speculative AI industry; many will find the collapse of companies and stock values to be sudden, but as someone who grew up miles away from Yellowstone Park I can tell you that excess foliage does not overgrow, dry, die, and ignite into a corrective forest fire overnight.
Corrections may seem to happen overnight, but the systems that cause them take time to get there. (And the green shoots that grow and stabilize after those corrections take time and care to grow, too.)
So whatever it is that you’re ruminating about at 3am while I write this—whether it’s good or bad or lucky or unfair or baffling or terrifying—feel free to repeat these three words with me.
Nothing happens overnight.
–Make a great day!
P.S. Counter-point — A few things that do happen overnight:
Oats
Prime Delivery (sometimes)
Your body rests and resets, so you can think more clearly
I feel sad for the Tik Tok generation. Everything seems to be instantaneous. As they get out into the real world, hopefully they'll figure out nothing happens overnight
I was literally up last night at 3am ruminating on something that isn’t going how I want (or quick enough)… so this is a perfect and timely reminder. Thank you