I was recently watching the highlights of solo climber Alex Honnold scaling a skyscraper in Taiwan without any protection.
As he’s climbing the skyscraper, he makes it look easy. But the only reason he makes it look easy is that he’s been practising climbing for years, and he’s almost perfected the art of climbing.
Watching Alex climb the skyscraper got me thinking, “Humans can do great things when they never stop practising their craft.”
But how many of us never even start practising our craft?
Alex has been climbing for over a decade, and that’s precisely why he’s such a good climber.
How good can we get?
I often think about how good I’ll be at writing after several years of practice. Then I remember that it’s best to focus on one day at a time and never break the habit.
There’s a price we have to pay to be great at our craft, and most people are unwilling to pay it—that price means showing up every day.
Whenever we want to get good at something, we’re not good at it at first
When I first started lifting weights, I could barely lift the 20kg dumbbells. But at my strongest, I’ve been able to lift the 50kg dumbbells with ease. But this improvement in strength took around 3 years. It all starts by getting better one day at a time. And if you keep that up for enough days, months and years, you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve in the long run.
Jeff Bezos is spending millions on a giant clock that will last for thousands of years
I listened to a podcast where Jeff Bezos was the guest, and he mentioned that he’s planning to build an expensive clock tower. He wants this clock to last 10,000 years and symbolise long-term thinking.
I can see where Jeff is coming from with this. Most of us think short-term, so we get mediocre results. But if we can think long term and consistently get better at our craft, we’ll, in the long run, be able to achieve amazing feats like Alex has, without needing to climb a skyscraper (As a human race we can also achieve amazing feats in centuries to thousands of years that isn’t possible in one lifetime, this was also what Jeff was getting at).
If Alex can climb a skyscraper, what can you do?
Alex is proof that humans can do amazing things. What amazing thing would you like to do? Just like Alex climbed the skyscraper, you can set out to achieve extraordinary things. But you need to pay the price every day to get better. It’s only when we pay the price every day that we can eventually achieve the seemingly impossible.
If it’s humanly possible, you can do it to
I’m not telling you to climb a skyscraper like Alex, but it’s worth looking at people you admire or who have achieved great things that you’d like to achieve.
For example, one of my favourite writers is Nassim Taleb. His work inspires me, and I’d like to produce work that’s as helpful as his.
Another person whom I look up to is Elon Musk because he’s achieved so much in many different endeavours.
When someone does well in life, I don’t get jealous. In fact, it inspires me to achieve remarkable feats.
Life would be boring without ambitious, wild goals
Big goals are what get me out of bed in the morning. If I didn’t have my goal of becoming a writer, my life would be boring.
Because I know how difficult it is to make a living as a full-time writer, this fact inspires me even more to become one. Because reaching that milestone will taste even sweeter.
Thank goodness for crazy people
Sometimes we need to witness someone doing something so audacious and crazy that it helps us realise how capable we are of almost impossible feats. When we realise that humans can achieve the seemingly impossible, it motivates us to overcome even the most difficult challenges.
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This was the 29/01/26 edition of my newsletter, posted to my email subscribers two days earlier.
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