Moonshots: why should we normalise failure in career and our personal lives?
How do you approach those ideas that are so crazy that they just might change the world?
Rather, the question should be — what you are willing to bet on them? $50? $100 000? How about your whole life?
Let’s take a step back, so what are moonshots?
Moonshots usually refer to radical new technologies that might solve some of the world’s hardest problems. The term comes from a literal moonshot — humanity’s goal to land on the moon.
Nowadays, many moonshots may not sound as grandiose, as they need to find a way to be commercially viable and cannot depend on government’s all-in, such as the literal moonshot did during the Cold War.
Although, let’s not kid ourselves, moonshots of our days are still rather bonkers.
Foghorn — creating clean fuel from seawater
Burning fossil fuels accounts for nearly 97% of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation in US accounts for 28% of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Thus, Project Foghorn aim was to:
“Radically reduce these emissions by pulling carbon and hydrogen out of seawater and combining it to create a new type of carbon-neutral fuel”.
The goal sounds absolutely ridiculous — take the most common element on Earth (water) and use it to produce fuel. If we look at fuel from a broader perspective — oil, entire countries are built and dependent on it, such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kuwait. Moreover, oil and other fuel extraction as well as production, generally speaking, is terrible for the environment.
So Foghorn undertook this gargantuan challenge with a hypothesis:
“It would be possible to make seawater fuel for somewhere between $5 and $10 per gasoline gallon equivalent (gge)”.
While this would not be the cheapest option, it would still be viable and cost-competitive in the Nordic countries, where gasoline is very expensive and focus on sustainability is as prominent as ever. Love it!
Ultimately, they managed to turn seawater into fuel!
In 2016, after 2 years of work, Foghorn was discontinued as the projected cost of hydrogen proved to be too high for this to project to be worth pursuing.
And this is the bit that I love the most.
They achieved this absolutely incredible feat, yet the final decision was that the hypothesis has to be rejected. And that, without a doubt, should be celebrated!
Why?
Because they had the bravado to pursue a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG), set strict hypotheses, and hold themselves accountable for its complete success — clear hypothesis dictated that achieving only part of the goal is not enough. Such a compelling goal and a truly scientific approach allowed them not only to persevere but also to know when to quit with a boatload of valuable learnings.
If you want to discover more moonshots , visit Google X moonshot factory.
Mantra for your bold pursuits
1. Improve and accept your decisions
Imagine you are choosing between a trip to Rome and trip to Paris. Prices to both places are similar, similar hotel reviews, weather is supposed to be lovely either way, but in end you decide that you just fancy Italian food more. While your friend decides to visit Paris.
You spend a week in Rome — the hotel was subpar, food that you came across was mostly just OK, and on a few afternoons it was rather rainy. You share your misfortunes with the aforementioned friend and learn that he had a time of his life in Paris — everything that you’ve expected in your trip.
Feelings of angst and pity for yourself starts to creep up on you for your poor decision making skills. This is called outcome bias. It is when we judge our decisions not based on the information we had at the time of the decision, but when we know of the outcome.
Always evaluate your decisions based on the information that you knew at the time of the decision.
You can improve your decision-making skills by asking yourself these questions:
- How could I apply my past knowledge and experiences to make my guess more educated? Maybe something similar happened in the past?
- What additional information could I acquire at the time of the decision that would make it more educated?
- Set minimum objectives for your guess accuracy and decide on what you would deem as accurate enough in that particular case?
2. Dare to fail
We are wary of risk due to the cost of failure that it carries, whether it might be financial or social. And, as you may know, each of us have a different tolerance to risk.
This part is rather self-explanatory, yet what I seek is to challenge you to assume the position not of “how much risk am I willing to bear?” but “what failure in this situation could teach me and how quickly could I bounce back from it?”
Such an approach allows you to expand the frame of risk evaluation:
Let’s illustrate for why I deem the latter to be crucial — you are at a company event and you have a wild idea that you’d like to run by the CEO. You pitch it (situation), CEO nods a few times and explains why that will never work (result). Bummer, yet you have achieved 2 things:
- Collected valuable feedback from someone who likely has a better oversight of the company, and now you know what actions you should take to improve the idea and make it probable or what you might have missed while designing your idea (action).
- Shown that you are always on the lookout for what could be next great thing for the company and are bold enough to advocate for it. Even if the idea is trash, people appreciate those that dare to share them (missed opportunity cost, if you were not to pitch).
I believe that this quote from a book called “Mastery” by George Leonard sums it up pretty well:
“I began to see more than a casual relationship between learning and the willingness to be foolish, between the master and the fool. By fool, to be clear, I don’t mean a stupid, unthinking person, but one with the spirit of the medieval fool, the court jester, the carefree fool in the tarot deck who bears the awesome number zero, signifying the fertile void from which all creation springs, the state of emptiness that allows new things to come into being.”
Embracing life’s opportunities and failures with open arms, ensures that in the long-term you will always end up with a hefty win, whether it might be direct or through application of learnings acquired through failures.
3. Do not only dream of success, but visualise the path to it
People often visualise how they will be sitting in their golden throne and are flung high into the air by a cheering crowd. This feels alluring, yet it misses a key part in the holistic visualisation — what will you have to do and what to endure to get to that throne?
What struggles will you have to go through, how will you prepare for them, and how will you overcome them. This helps you to be emotionally prepared and, most importantly, have an answer for when the pursuit gets tough and you’ll start asking yourself: “Do I really need this? Will it really make me happy? Maybe what I have is already enough?”
Not a moonshot example, yet a personal one — while walking a 24-hour 100km(~62 miles) hike, these questions became such good buddies of mine, that they started checking in on me every ~5km. Although, before even starting the hike, I had the answer prepared: “I am doing this because I am determined to learn what my body and mind are capable of”.
This helped me to avoid the struggle of having to find answers to these tough questions with a strained mind and body as at that time they would have definitely turned into quite a hassle.
It is crucial to be radically honest with yourself, try to live through the ups and downs of the journey that you are about to embark on, prepare answers for the inevitable questions of why you are doing this and launch yourself at it.
Remember, practice makes perfect and life is a marathon, not a sprint, thus prioritise steady, albeit sometimes slow, growth rather than fast and furious.
