There Is No Finish Line
Hunter got me thinking yesterday about how we define success and had a great reminder to pause and smile.
Hunter got me thinking yesterday about how we define success and had a great reminder to pause and smile.
The best people I have ever worked with did this. But they also got lost in their work — the actual act of practicing their craft. They were so wrapped up in what they were doing, they separated from the pressure and elevated.
For them there was no finish line.
I am reading the new Phil Knight book (of course I am) and he talks about this concept in the first 5 pages. For him it is like running — when you run around a track or down a dirt road, alone, you have no real destination. The act of running becomes the destination — his advice is just don’t stop.
Don’t even think about stopping until you get there and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.
In tech, the people who we look to as measures of success (from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg to Larry Page…) keep running. They don’t stop with the first idea or feel successful when the first vision is fullfilled — they redraw the finish line and keep going — further and further.
The fact that the best are constantly redefining the destination, moving the finish line, makes it easier for me to focus on the act of doing and worry less about “success.”
Besides, if I defined success and was able to achieve it, what would I do — stop?