Learn to pivot instead of giving up
It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So — Mark Twain
- PROBLEM: how often you have an idea, a hypothesis, yet when the facts show otherwise, you decide to push through it and
- CAUSE: lack of data and change of mindset
- SOLUTION: → it is not being afraid to see what is wrong with your idea, testing it, seeing the gaps, so you can change the approach
- EXPLANATION HOW: The data that identified the gaps or invalidated the hypothesis completely is still a data you need to come up with the better one — that’s the growth, It is not the same as quitting the hypothesis completely— that’s a failure to do find out what if
That’s when I learned about Elon Musk, an all star engineer who just went into internet market, created revolutionary software things one after the other until he stopped at making his own rockets and making electrical vehicles commercially viable and cheap cars for everyday consumers. You hear about this guy and you automatically want to know his secret.
As I am reading his biography, I am astonished how he would approach his ideas, and how quickly and readily he would accept pivoting while still having his eyes on the prize. Reading Elon Musk’s reminds me of people I worked with like him.
It is about getting your hands dirty and failing to get some feedback on direction.
It is like cutting a paper along a curvy line. If you focus too much at the point where the scissors meets the paper, you wiggle more and requires more concentration and control. If you keep your eyes on the line further along an inch or too, suddenly the hand cuts faster, more precisely, and with less effort. The intuition just needs to knows where to go, requires less data processing to hit the target further down the line.
