A TIME FOR CRAZY GOALS Two Toronto engineers, Todd Reichert and Cameron Robertson, were on a quest to build the world’s first human-powered helicopter—and they succeeded! Experts had repeatedly concluded that a human-powered helicopter was an impossibility. Reichert and Robertson somehow missed that “fact.” Sometimes it is not knowing specific information that can indirectly fuel your success as David Noonan describes (“Impossible Flight” Scientific American, November 2014, pp. 78–83): “The two Canadian engineers are not helicopter designers, which is why they were ignorant of the scientific papers dooming them to futility.” (p. 80) Sometimes this kind of counterintuitive execution is exactly what is needed to break barriers and achieve new milestones. While I am never one to endorse foolishness or a general disregard for common sense, on the other hand, how will we ever discover anything revolutionary if we assume all our current “facts” or “presuppositions” are perfectly correct? Similarly, how will we ever know whether a goal is genuinely realistic without putting it to the test or even getting a bit crazy about it? Just because something is perceived to be impossible does not automatically mean that it is impossible. Were that the case, then we would not have certain things in existence today such as tubeless tires, computers, robots, electron microscopes, stealth bombers, kidney transplants, and motion detectors to name a few. Moments of greatest accomplishment were often preceded by unusually overwhelming challenges: “When Reichert talks about the reasons for his and Robertson’s success, he goes beyond technology. He talks about their commitment to doing the impossible or at least trying to. ‘You have to set crazy goals,’ he says, ‘because that’s what motivates people.’” (p. 83) Hey, if you aim for Pluto but only land on Mars, that is probably still a lot further than you would have traveled otherwise. https://youtube/watch?v=0zKmyMEXsCw [Today’s post— Blog.reliableinsights.]
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 18:44:02 +0000
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