Law Of Unbreakable Records
I was in an event recently where a panel was explaining how hard it was to break records. Ultraviolette had created a bike F99 which broke two records. That put a lot of people on edge to understand how they did it. Though I see explanations about how technically challenging it was, something else was bugging me.
Breaking those records meant building new technologies ground up. That’s fine, but that wasn’t their only challenge. Challenges much worse came later. Bike turned off absruptly while testing, people doubting the ability of a startup, evevn some huge blocks just hours before the record breaking drive. All this brought out a thought in me; Is nature around us in general is against breaking barriers?
We all felt it many times in our life. I felt this recently where I was training for a marathon but had to halt it because of an injury. I see hundreds of such examples in marathon training alone. And there is an example for every such barrier. This was just a personal barrier, but when you try to break a global barrier, the nature pushes back multiple folds.
But why is it? I thought life had formed on this planet to break barriers one after the other. Aren’t we in the race to keep pushing the bar higher and higher? But why nature is holding things back instead of letting go?
When something we plan doesn’t go through, it is easy to blame it on a person. Either it’s an MNC’s yearly targets or your own plan, we all look for one person. But I don’t look at the whole thing as a one person job. I started looking at it as if the Nature itself is against change. We can say it’s the psychology of a group of people to remain unchanged. But once I changed the lens to a much wider one, I understand it more.
Change takes time. We took millions of years to evolve. Nature around us would love to be same all along, so we take a lot of time to change if we go through nature’s rules. The moment you try to increase the pace, you feel the friction. Lets say the world is moving at 5% inflation per year. Getting a hike of 5% won’t be that tough every year cause you are obeying to the laws of nature. As you try to bump it up, resistence picks up real fast. 9%, you might have to negotitate real hard. 30%, you might have to switch jobs. 150%, you are at the risk of getting laid off even if you switch jobs. Greater the push, greater the friction.
Now comes the hard part; how to handle friction. Well, I am able to handle some but not all. One factor to grow faster which I’ve learnt is that you need to enjoy friction. You need not try to push all aspects of your life to grow faster; One feature at a time. Pick a feature you love about yourself and try to push boundaries around it. You start feeling the friction. Learn not to understand it, but to accept it. Just row through the water upstream.
CEOs who are successful have many qualities. One important quality is to accept the highest amount of friction. When Tesla was about to go bankrupt, Elon Musk got everyone in the company together to do just sales. Even he sat on a phoneline doing sales. Out of it comes the Richest man in the world. The innate ability to go against a tsunami brought him here.
We might not have such ability. But try to grow it slowly. Experience friction little-by-little and adapt to it. Only then can you become the ideal person you dream of.