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.
Very inspiring post, Keith!
Many rich and famous entrepreneurs have gone bankrupt before in their lives. Also, in the movie Rocky Balboa, I love Stallone’s line “Its not about how hard you can hit the other guy, but about how hard you can get hit and still keep going”.
I think a tangential business conclusion one can draw from Roger Bannister’s story could be that competition can get inspired by the first mover. I’ve seen companies reject new ideas until their competition does it successfully and then they re-open old files and projects to go after the pioneer and compete.
Nice quote. It’s funny that you can start that pearl of wisdom with, “As the wise Rocky once said…”
That’s a good point about competitors. And for that matter, I have heard of big companies who explicitly take the tactic that they are going to wait until someone else proves a concept before they enter into the space. On the surface, it may actually be a good tactic to reduce risk.
The irony of this whole discussion, is that although I find the examples inspiring, and although it takes quite a unique character to perform such feats, I’m not sure I’d advise it. I think in many situations, if you don’t have good evidence to think something is possible and you have good reason to think it may be impossible, you’re probably better off quitting. There is nothing wrong with quitting and trying something new.
The more I’ve thought about it, I bet many of the examples above, the people who persevered actually *did* have reason to think the particular goal was possible. I just read something about Roger Banister that he once ran a race and did one of the four laps in ~55 seconds, and *that* was when he realized a 4 minute mile was possible. He just had to get in good enough shape to do 3 more sub-one-minute laps. There were probably similar insights in each of the examples that just don’t get passed on in the historical accounts.
Keith,
Ending in a quote from Rand was perfect. I chuckled and raised my glass to capitalism. … and now back to work … unfortunately, I have nothing intelligent to add to the conversation. (-;