Explorer, Tennis Player, Entrepreneur
Following my post last week analogising exploration and tennis, a fabulous bit of perspective in an email from the inimitable Ethan Zuckerman:
"I wanted to object – strenuously – to your tennis analogy. You mentioned Børge Ousland and his nine journeys over 22 years. That struck me as a huge number. But I'm thinking as an entrepreneur, not as a tennis player. In my experience, everything worth doing in my life has taken a minimum of four years. That's true for Tripod, Geekcorps and now for Global Voices. As I'm reconfiguring my life right now to get off the road and write a book, I'm praying that it won't take four years, but I won't be surprised if that ends up being the interval, from starting to think about the topics to the last talk I give supporting the new volume.
I don't think that four years is some sort of magical figure – I think everyone's got their own periodicity – but I think that folks who achieve big, complex things take long, long times to do so. It's deeply frustrating – I'd like to think that I've got time enough to try a hundred crazy ideas and fail at most of them. Increasingly, I think I'll get ten or fifteen chances to try something big and worthwhile and give a proper go of it.
If you're thinking as an entrepreneur, not as a tennis player, nine completed projects would be the thing of legend – even someone like Steve Jobs is associated with a couple of successes, not a dozen. And I think you're more of an entrepreneur than you'd strictly like to be – as much as it would be wonderful for these expeditions to be athletic contests where you put your strength and will against the terrain and the elements, it's clear that they require as much strength, creativity and passion to organize, research, train and – god help us all – fundraise."
— Filed under Inspiration