Roger Bannister was the first man to run a mile under 4 minutes. Records hovered around the 4 minute mark for years, never being broken. Many thought 4 minutes was a physical impossibility for the human body. Some speculated a man’s heart might even explode if he tried. Roger Bannister thought otherwise. Through systematic training and repeated attempts, in 1954 he broke it: 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. His achievement is amazing, but what’s fascinating is what happened after it. Within a month, John Landy broke his record. In the years following, so did hundreds of others. What prevented all these people from breaking 4 minutes in all the years before Bannister?
Think about it, how much easier is it to persevere when you know others have done what you’re trying to do. Law school, bar exam, medical school, all of these goals are challenging, but hundreds of thousands of people before you have done it. There is no question if it’s possible, you just have to put in the work.
But how often is the barrier to achievement an imagined obstacle? How many people would have argued that Wikipedia was impossible before seeing it done? If Jimmy Wales had presented the idea to you before launching, would you have argued that thousands of people would never contribute their time and energy to write those articles. Most people won’t even run the race if they’re not sure there is a finish line.
Once you’ve seen what’s possible, its much easier to imitate. This pattern is repeated time and time again. Peggy Fleming won the gold in Olympic figure skating with double jumps. Today, it’s expected that top figure skaters will do triples, or even quadruples.
It was inconceivable that a deaf and blind child could be taught language before Hellen Keller. I’m not sure if it’s commonplace now, but wow.
Edison tried thousands of different filaments for his light bulb before finding one that worked. Why didn’t he conclude after the first thousand that the material he was searching for may not exist?
The common thread in all these examples is that people persisted without any good evidence to think that what they were trying to do was even possible. They persisted in the face of perfectly reasonable doubt.
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.” - From “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand
…This thought is half-finished. I’ve been sitting on this post for a week and I’m honestly not sure what to conclude from these examples. But I’m throwing it out there anyway.
