Make Your Own Success Timeline

Humans have a bad habit of comparing our success timelines.

Let’s take a brief step back: What even is that?

Plot every major life goal of yours on a single straight line—each one as a separate node with a particular date or timeframe i.e “in five years”. For example, “Go To Business School (in 2 years)” might be one, “Live Abroad” might be another, or even “Start A Family” or “Become a Manager.”

Congratulations—this is your success timeline. It’s ok if you don’t actually write it out on paper, but many of us keep one of these somewhere in our mind, either consciously or subconsciously.

The nodes may be few and far between or they may be clustered together, it’ll depend on the person. But therein lies the rub. Many of us care way too much about aligning our success timelines with those of our peers.

“Well, if they’re already on their second job, shouldn’t I be by now?” or “I know I said I’d look at business school in five years, but maybe that should really be in two?”

These anxious questions, sparked by our natural human comparison tendencies, fill up our minds like smoke fills up a popcorn-filled microwave you forgot about.

Soon, our own success timeline, something deeply personal, looks more like everyone else’s than like the one you truly know is right for yourself.

The point is, time is relative, but so too are our success timelines.

The more we compare ours to those of others, the less control and confidence we have in our own path. A path that is personal for a reason.

Success has no objective timeline.

Let me share a quick story with you all. I recently caught up with a great friend of mine who I worked with in the past. He now works at one of the best tech companies in not only New York, but worldwide. His path is non-traditional and his success timeline definitely gave me a breath of fresh air and actually was the impetus for this article.

First, here’s what his success timeline doesn’t look like:

Graduate college → 1st job (2yrs) → business school (2yrs)→ dream job(∞)

Instead, after college, he worked for almost five years in consulting, then joined the peace corp for two and half years, moved to Africa to join an NGO for another two years, interned at a NYC startup for a few months, went to business school for two years, came back to said startup for another 2 years, and now has moved into a very successful role at one of the top tech companies in the world. He’s 35.

Success timelines are yours and yours alone. Don’t feel the pressure to take steps towards your goals at the exact same time that your peers are taking those steps.

In the end, it’s not about how fast you reach the end, it’s about the fact that you’ve paced your success to a speed that suits you.

I hope this resonates with a few of my friends and peers and maybe even with you there on the other side of this screen.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon!