I spend a fair amount of time on Quora. Others are asking the same questions I want answered. I enjoy answering questions for others when I can. All of my content from Kennetic Expression, Productive & Successful, and Text Request are on Quora. It’s a good place for hungry professionals to spend some time.

While scrolling, I came across a question from a 22 y.o. “How can I become addicted to success?” It’s a very interesting question, because our brains actually can become (more or less) addicted to anything, including success and achievement. It’s all about whatever act creates an increase in dopamine in your brain, which can be anything from cocaine to buying classical CDs. Here’s my answer.

“How can I become addicted to success?”

I think your intentions are good, but your mindset is off, just by a hair. When you look around and peg others as being addicted to success, so to speak, what you’re really seeing is people who are addicted to growth.

They’re not perfectionists, per se. They don’t freak out if they make a tiny mistake. But they’re always trying to learn, and to grow, and to get better, and to improve themselves as well as everything around them (world, environment, living situation, etc.).

I’d suggest rephrasing your desire for success into a desire for growth. Luckily, there’s an abundance of resources to help with this. My personal favorite resource is books – it’s limitless! There will always be another book on success, on productivity, on being better, on specific ways to do XYZ. Plus, these are curated by the best in the industry – even the best authors have great editors to help them out.

If you’re not a big reader, I’d still suggest picking up a few books to help you out. Maybe avoid anything dense, but something to give you a taste of it all. I think anything by Malcolm Gladwell would be good. Tim Ferris as well. Seth Godin. Maybe even just hop into a Barnes & Noble and see what’s on the shelves that interests you.

Success begets success. Accomplishing one thing, however small, encourages and motivates you to accomplish the next thing. If you want to become addicted to success and to growth, then you need to start with accomplishing something.

This could be simply going to the gym, or going three times in one week. It could be taking the first steps towards starting that blog, or looking for people you’d like to emulate who you can spend time with. It could be jumping all over Quora looking for questions you can answer to build confidence and a sense of reward. You can start anywhere, but the important thing is that you start.

You’ve got to keep working at the little things, because the big things are simply the sum of a bunch of little things. There’s a saying that every overnight success is twenty years in the making. It’s true! No one just wakes up one day, thinks “hmm I’m going to be successful,” and achieves it that day. It takes time. It often takes thousands of hours worth of effort. But the important thing is that you start, and that you keep trying to grow just a little bit more each day.