You’ve probably seen that one infographic on Instagram. It shows two lines. One is a straight arrow pointing up—what people think success looks like. The other is a tangled ball of yarn that eventually finds its way to the top—what it actually looks like. It's a cliché because it’s true. We’re taught from a young age that if we work hard, the graph of our lives should look like a steady 45-degree angle. But honestly, success is not linear, and pretending it is only makes the "down" years feel like a personal failure rather than a natural part of the cycle.
Progress is weird.
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One day you're on top of the world, and the next, you're wondering if you've ever actually known what you're doing. This isn't just about "staying positive." It’s about the raw, frustrating reality of how skill acquisition, business growth, and personal healing actually function in the real world.
The Plateau Problem and the Myth of Constant Growth
Most of us expect a direct correlation between effort and results. You put in 10 units of work; you get 10 units of progress. But the universe doesn't really care about our math. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear describes the "Plateau of Latent Potential." This is that grueling period where you’re doing the work every single day, but nothing is happening. You’re heating an ice cube from 25 degrees to 31 degrees. To the outside observer—and to your own frustrated brain—nothing has changed. It’s still a block of ice.
Then you hit 32 degrees. Suddenly, it melts.
That’s the thing about realizing success is not linear. The breakthrough only happens because of all the "invisible" work you did when it felt like you were standing still. If you quit at 31 degrees, you'd think you failed. You didn't fail; you just didn't finish the phase.
Why your brain hates the "messy middle"
We are biologically wired for quick feedback. Our ancestors needed to know that if they followed the tracks, they’d find the deer. In the modern world, you might spend three years building a startup or six months on a new diet before seeing any "real" evidence of success. When the feedback loop is long, our brains interpret the lack of immediate results as a sign that we’re off track. We start "pivoting" or "optimizing" things that just needed more time.
Real Stories of Non-Linear Paths
Look at Vera Wang. She didn't even enter the fashion industry until she was 40. Before that, she was a figure skater and a journalist. If you looked at her trajectory at age 30, you wouldn’t see a "fashion mogul" in the making. You’d see someone who had "failed" to make the Olympic team and was working a corporate job. Her path was jagged. It was full of restarts.
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Then there’s the tech world. Slack, the communication tool almost every office uses, started as a failed video game called Glitch. The team spent years building a world that nobody wanted to play in. By any standard metric, the project was a disaster. But the internal chat tool they built to make the game became the multi-billion dollar success. Success didn't come from the original plan; it came from the wreckage of a failure.
The "Overnight Success" Illusion
We love the narrative of the wunderkind. We see the 22-year-old billionaire and feel like we're behind. But we're seeing the highlight reel. For every "overnight" success, there are usually ten years of "silent" work that nobody filmed. It's sort of like looking at a tree. You see the branches growing up, but you don't see the roots digging deep into the dirt. Without the roots, the tree falls over the first time a storm hits. Those boring, stagnant years? That's you growing roots.
The Cognitive Dissonance of Falling Backward
Sometimes, progress involves taking three steps back. This is the hardest part to swallow. You might lose a job, go through a breakup, or see your revenue dip by 40%. It feels like you’re losing ground.
But sometimes you have to dismantle a house to build a skyscraper.
In psychology, there's a concept called "post-traumatic growth." It suggests that people can experience a massive surge in personal development only after a period of extreme struggle or regression. You aren't going back to zero; you're returning to the foundation with better tools.
If you’re in a dip right now, ask yourself: Is this a dead end, or is this a "recalculating" phase?
Tactical Ways to Handle the Non-Linear Nature of Success
Since we know the path is going to be a mess, how do we actually survive it without losing our minds? You can't just "wish" your way through a plateau. You need a system that doesn't rely on constant winning.
1. Focus on Lead Measures, Not Lag Measures
A lag measure is the final result—the number on the scale, the money in the bank. You can't control those directly. A lead measure is the action you take—the 30 minutes of writing, the five sales calls, the workout. If you track the work instead of the result, you can feel successful even on days when the "graph" isn't going up.
2. Redefine "Failure" as Data Collection
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, talks about this in Principles. He views life as a series of loops. You try something, you fail, you learn a principle, and you improve. The "failure" is just the input needed for the next iteration. If you don't fail, you aren't getting new data.
3. Zoom Out
If you look at the stock market on a daily basis, it looks like a heart attack. It’s up, it’s down, it’s crashing, it’s soaring. If you look at it over 30 years, it’s a relatively smooth upward line. Your life is the same. Stop looking at the daily fluctuations. Look at the three-year trend. Are you more resilient than you were in 2022? Do you know more than you did last year? That's the real metric.
4. Build "Slack" into Your System
Burnout happens when we expect ourselves to operate at 100% efficiency all the time. But since success is not linear, you will have seasons where your output is naturally lower. Maybe you’re dealing with health issues or family stress. If your plan requires "perfect" conditions to work, your plan is flawed. Give yourself permission to have a "maintenance" season where you aren't striving, just holding the line.
Why We Should Embrace the Chaos
Honestly, if success were a straight line, it would be boring. There would be no story. No grit. No character development. The moments where things go wrong are the moments where you actually find out what you’re made of.
The struggle isn't a sign that you're doing it wrong; it's a sign that you're in the arena.
The most successful people aren't the ones who never hit a plateau. They're the ones who didn't mistake the plateau for the summit. They kept walking even when the view didn't change for miles.
Actionable Next Steps
To move forward when the path feels stalled:
- Audit your metrics: Identify one "lead measure" you can control today (e.g., "I will send 3 emails" instead of "I will get a new client").
- Audit your circle: Stop following "hustle culture" accounts that only show the wins. Find mentors who are honest about their "messy middle" years.
- Journal the "invisible" wins: Write down three things you learned this week that have nothing to do with money or status. Maybe you handled a difficult conversation better, or you finally understood a complex concept.
- Zoom out: Open a calendar and look at where you were five years ago. List five major obstacles you've cleared since then. Use that as proof that your current obstacle is also temporary.
Progress is happening, even when it’s invisible. Trust the process, but more importantly, trust your ability to navigate the detours.