Your Journey To Professional Success Is A Marathon Not A Sprint

<blockquote> “If people can just extend the time horizon that they measure themselves on, they can do so much more.” — Alex Hormozi </blockquote> What is success? How do you define it? Take a minute to think about it. In reality, everyone’s definition may be different, but in the context of academia, success is often equated with outcomes such as publications, awards, grants, and professional titles. Each academic may place greater importance on some outcomes compared to others, but the issue with viewing success in this way is that all outcomes are distal in nature. Think about it, how long does it take to conduct a research study, write up the manuscript, get reviewer comments, edit the manuscript based on reviewer feedback, and get your work into online and print formats from a journal? In my experience, it can take well over a year or two. What happens if you fail in getting your work published along the way? This examples raise a general question, how do you stay motivated in the face of failure when measures of success are distal in nature? This question is one that I struggled with early in my career, and I hope to share with you what I learned along the way. <h1>Success Is Related to Time</h1> Our perception of success is largely viewed within the context of time. An individual that has more time has a greater chance for success, not because success exponentially increases with time, but because time gives opportunity for greater practice. Through practice, we learn from trial and error, and apply our newly acquired knowledge to future instances in which our odds for failure decrease. Given that most of the individuals we admire in our field have likely been a researcher for longer than we have, their success has largely been associated with their ability to have more opportunities to learn from their failures. However, this outcome assumes that they persevere from one failure to the next. Unfortunately, many individuals may not start their journey from the fear of failure or may quit after experiencing a setback. <a href="https://medium.com/@josephriosphd/your-journey-to-success-is-a-marathon-not-a-sprint-48f5754dcef2">Read More</a>