The only real shortcut in life is to understand it backwards. It’s easier to solve a maze backwards and the same holds true with life.
Each year since 1993, the Goodwood Festival of Speed has attracted a sold out crowd of 150,000 to watch cars race up a hill. In 1999 a F1 car set the record at 41.60 seconds, until 2019 when this happened.
The Volkswagen IDR absolutely obliterated the record, taking 1.7 seconds off the twenty year old time.
How did this happen? Well, Volkswagen had developed this car to win a legendary “hill climb” race in the USA, called “Pike’s Peak”. They then brought the car and river (Romain Dumas) to Goodwood and the rest is history.
Whoever thought of that didn’t have to take twenty years to work out how to beat the Goodwood record, they simply came up with a shortcut.
From the latest FS newsletter:
The only real shortcut in life is to understand it backwards. It’s easier to solve a maze backwards and the same holds true with life.
Learn from people further down the path than you and make their hindsight your foresight.
From Shane Parrish and his Farnam Street “brain food No. 393” newsletter
This sets me to musing on ways we can “shortcut” to accelerate to top speed (please forgive the clumsy anchoring to the Goodwood story!):
To illustrate, just today I was talking to a client who leads a global business. We reflected that one of the easiest ways to move faster and more effectively in growing is to look globally to learn from those who have already “been there, done that”. We also shared how often we find people in different businesses and different countries (hence the “global” reference) have an idea then proceed to work on it without first thinking “who may already have worked on this?” and asking around their business (and other contacts) globally.
Perhaps I’m lazy, but when I have an idea, the first thing I do is to assume that someone else has had the idea, then see what I can learn from them. One example is that at the height of a Bitcoin mania in Autumn 2017 I coined a phrase: “Distributed Trust” about the impact blockchain (not bitcoin but blockchain) would have in future. I then found that, other than in particularly techie fields, the only person using that term was Rachel Botsman in her book “Who can you Trust?“. Great, I thought, someone has done the research and written a book, saves me doing it 😉
Perhaps lazy, and also perhaps on a global level we can be arrogant and complacent if we assume no other people in other countries may have “got there first” so we can learn from them. What if, instead, we are open and curious?
My mind turns to my small island home (though I now live in London) of the Cayman Islands and how expert they are at effective regulation and compliance of global finance, anti-money laundering etc. Perhaps large countries struggling with this (eg the UK, ironically) may turn to other countries (like Cayman) for help.
Oh, and a huge focus in all developed countries on equality, including a recent one I saw in the UK around exploring how to use blockchain to bank the unbanked. Yes, great to look at that, but please, “shortcut it” by talking to experts in the Southern Caribbean who are already there and can share their path (and let me know if you want introduced to them!).
So, whether because you are lazy, impatient, curious, open or whatever feels true to what drives you, do please again consider Shane’s wise words:
The only real shortcut in life is to understand it backwards. It’s easier to solve a maze backwards and the same holds true with life.
Learn from people further down the path than you and make their hindsight your foresight.