The web has made us impatient about our writing. We think that if we start a blog, it should take a few months to impact thousands, or if we write a book, we should finish it within a year.
I have often wondered how long it takes to create something of lasting value. Now I have a definitive answer from the late Steve Jobs, who knows a thing or two about making an impact: It takes seven or eight years.
Here’s what he told author Brent Schlender, who interviewed him countless times: “I have been trained to think in units of time that are measured in several years. With what I’ve chosen to do with my life, you know, even a small thing takes a few years. To do anything of magnitude takes at least five years, more likely seven or eight. Rightfully or wrongfully, that’s how I think.”
For most of us, that thing of lasting value will be a book. Yet, usually we get a year or so to write it. How much time should you give yourself to write something of magnitude? It is not often up to us, because the publisher decides. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m impatient and easily bored. I don’t think I could work on a book for seven or eight years. Or perhaps I would never allow myself such an indulgence.
Some of our greatest food-based books have taken even longer than Jobs’s estimate. Claudia Roden’s magnificent The Book of Jewish Food, for example, took 15 years of research, cooking and writing, and her legendary editor Judith Jones waited for it.
A friend of mine took four years to write a cookbook that won a national award and five years to write a cookbook that didn’t. Now both will no longer be printed. Perhaps a legacy is not just about writing a book, but having people continue to read it, just has Job’s legacy was about his work’s impact.
Is our culture so sped up that we only write things that can be delivered soon, like blog posts? Do blog posts have lasting value, or are we just cataloging them for that giant library in the sky? Do you have the patience (or financing) for a long project? Can you name any recent food books that took Job’s estimate of seven or eight years?
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