Everything takes longer than you think.

For a long time, I had been feeling bad because I felt I was behind schedule with my work. But then I remembered this saying by Gary Vaynerchuk, that “Everything takes longer than you think.”

Wisdom from Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur in America that also gives out a lot of advice on working hard and becoming the most successful version of you. His philosophy is not about being the best person in the room, it is about being the best person you can be. There is no competition with others.

He is one of my three favorite self-help gurus along with Anthony Robbins and Tim Ferris. Plenty of times I have turned to books, videos and posts from these three experts to give me guidance and motivation.

And Gary Vaynerchuk was there for me again when I needed him. Well, not literally of course. Literally he has no idea I exist. But his teachings and philosophy, were there for me. And one of his most famous sayings is that everything will take longer than you think. I realize how incredibly true that is now.

What I realized

I recently completed writing two books, and it took me a really LONG time to finish them. Much, much longer than planned. I was actually mentally beating myself up and feeling bad because I thought I was ‘behind schedule’.

Then I remembered this saying of his, and I realized there is no such thing as ‘being behind schedule’. Since everything takes longer than expected, there is then no schedule. There is only the deadline we set, and there is a good chance we will finish the work well after this deadline.

A deadline can be useful to help keep us motivated to work. But just remember there is a high probability you will not always meet it.

Most people don’t realize everything takes longer than you think

Most people set a date or deadline for accomplishing their goal, and become emotionally invested in it. They work ridiculously hard to achieve their goal by the set time. And this can be one advantage of having a deadline, it causes us to work harder to finish on time. But when people miss the goal, they become upset. The logical decision to make here would be to accept it, and extend the deadline. But humans are emotional creatures and not logical creatures.

A lot of people beat themselves up, feel like a failure, become stressed, even go into depression. The reality is there will always be obstacles, learning curves we did not know of, personal problems, lack of motivation, etc. Delays will happen. We don’t realistically know how long something will take until we actually do it. Which is why how long we “think” it will take us to finish something is never accurate. As what we “think” in our fantasy world will be different to how long it takes us to “do” in the real world. So it will always take more time than we planned for or expect it to.

Don’t beat yourself up and make it worse. Accept that reality will be different to what you imagine it to be. And keep going forward. You are still further ahead than if you had not started or not tried doing anything.

For anyone who is working hard, and feel it is taking too long, remember this saying, that “Everything takes longer than you think.” So don’t be hard on yourself if you are not completing your goals as soon as you wish. Be patient and keep chipping away at your goal. It will happen eventually.