The 6–18 Month Rule: How Short Seasons of Focus Create Lifelong Mastery
November 11, 2025•185 words
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” - Aristotle
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” - Robert Collier
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” - Malcolm Gladwell
The simplest path to getting ahead in any academic or athletic pursuit is surprisingly down-to-earth, commit to a season of focused skill building. Give yourself six to eighteen months, and spend two to four hours a day in deliberate high level skill-sets practice.
Mix in a couple of lighter “recovery” days each week, and on the harder days, push yourself to genuinely learn, create, or train at full intensity. Over time, this rhythm allows you to produce high-quality work, strengthen your abilities, and, in academics or athletics, transform your mind or body in ways that compound.
Vast majority of people won’t sustain this kind of steady commitment, but the ones who do live this process, inevitably rise above the rest.
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