Here we are now in the final of our 3-episode series on the Wright Brothers - where we have drawn parallels and principles that the Wright Brothers employed to succeed in an untried and unknown endeavor to create something new and change the world.
The world is changing more rapidly than ever with the constant breakthroughs of AI and in the previous two episodes we explored principles 1-5 and then 6-10, so Iâd encourage you to start with the episode entitled âSkeptics at Kitty Hawkâ followed by âDoubters in Daytonâ before this concluding episode in the three-part series, with this episode which is entitled âFlight Fanatics in Franceâ
And as a reminder, for this 3-part series, I have referenced David McCulloughâs book - The Wright Brothers.
If you are still here in this episode, that tells me you are ready for Wright Brothers principle #11 which is They Sacrificed.
The Brothers hailed from Dayton, Ohio, and over the span of 4 years, they made the trek to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina multiple times. Rather than testing their fliers in their hometown, they chose Kitty Hawk because of its ideal wind conditions, soft sand and nearby water for emergency landing options.
Their accomplishments didnât come easy. In fact, leading up to their first successful flight in 1903, the brothers first traveled to Kitty Hawk in 1900. They would make a total of 5 round trips, resulting in over 7000 miles traveled by train. There were stretches in their journey where they had to travel by boat. They endured a hurricane during their 1901 trek, along with historic mosquito outbreaks that year as well.
Orville wrote back home to his sister Katharine to describe the ordeal trying to camp in tents on their journey during this outbreak:
âOur blankets then became unbearable. The perspiration would roll off of us in torrents. We would partly uncover and the mosquitoes would swoop down upon us in vast multitudes. We would make a few desperate and vain slaps, and again retire behind our blankets. Misery! Misery!â
Once they would arrive in Kitty Hawk each year with their supplies, they would have to build their own hangar for their gliders and for themselves to shelter in - often against the backdrop of inclement weather.
Their endeavors not only came with a cost to their comfort, but it also cost them in other areas. There were relationship costs, with time away from their family. It cost them the comfort of the familiar - often the best battlefields to wage war on the untried are far afield and not in your own backyard.
They also had to delegate the day-to-day operations of their bicycle shop which was funding their pursuits.
And their most valuable resource of time was spent in countless hours, false starts, dead ends, delays, disappointments and these are all bitter pills to swallow - yet that sacrifice played out in the moments that mattered most are the strongest antidote to the singular emotion or result you must chase away at all costs - that emotion is a cancer which will rot you away from the inside. That emotion I refer to is REGRET.
There are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and high callings to act. There is a clarion call to get off the bus to delusion and disappointment and to change direction or pivot.
This AI pivot we face today may come at a cost for you as well. There may be sacrifice, whether comfort, the familiar, relationships, and time, but once safely out of the danger zone and at a better vantage point, you will find you can harness this durable skill framework to your advantage and soar to new heights.
Focus on the process along the way. Find meaning in the methods and set no expectations on others, and especially not on immediate outcomes. Much like Thomas Edison, you are experimenting and need to reframe failure as simply eliminating another approach that didnât work and reassessing to decide next steps - recognizing that your process is bringing you one step closer to your unique perfect place.
It is much like a game of hot and cold. It isnât personal, you have to move to get signals if you are getting closer to or farther from your goals. The static are at a standstill for fear of hearing âcoldâ and being ridiculed. But that lack of movement will cause you to stagnate, forever hiding in tepid mediocrity. To quote the band LANYs song âHome is Where the Hurt Isâ - âWhat good is it to dream if we ainât going to move our feet?â
To apply principle #11 of âThey Sacrificedâ to your own station in life â I encourage you to embrace sacrifice to avoid regret. It is definitely the lesser of the two discomforts of which only one can be avoided. So choose wisely!
Now on to Wright Brotherâs Principle #12 â âThey Rested in the Face of Intense Competitionâ
And for this principle of resting, I want to revisit a book I recommended in the first episode of this 3-part series. That book again is âSlow Productivityâ by Cal Newport.
One of his principles of Slow Productivity is to âWork at a Natural Paceâ.
It can seem impossible to work at a natural pace in our high paced world, and believe me, I have had to learn this principle over and over as I have worked myself to a crisp on several occasions.
Looking back on those times of extreme work, much of what I was doing really wasnât that important. And so choosing that which matters most and doing fewer things - another Slow Productivity principle in this book, is how you can truly focus on quality and that is how you can stand apart from the crowd.
But how can we do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality? A good start would be to stop overcommitting. It is easy to overcommit - especially when we are always online and always inviting interruptions for a quick chat here, a quick call there or yet another meeting that could have been an email.
The Wright Brothers were indeed racing the clock. Being the first to flight was an important distinction. Their legacy would be lost if they were second to accomplish manned flight.
And yet, they rested in the face of intense competition and at the potential expense of their legacy.
And I have reflected on my worst decisions I have made. And there is a common culprit that has successfully nudged me into unforced errors over and over - that culprit is the ticking clock.
The ticking clock guilt trips you to say yes to commitments you should say no to.
And thereâs a personal productivity cottage industry and pervasive grind culture that fills our heads with toxic math.
That math goes something like thisâŚ
âIf I made this much money working 2000 hours last year, I should see a 50% increase in my income this year if I work 3000 hours.â
The problem with time is it is fluid and not 1 to 1 proportional. It is also finite. And our bodies and especially our minds need time to recharge. We need a change of scenery and to use various parts of our brains to experience the unlock.
And the Wright Brothers were not entirely unaware of others that also were working long and hard to achieve lift off first.
And yet they chose to take Sundays off. This we know from their journals and press reports.
We all know the exhortation to work smarter and not harder, yet we fool ourselves to think the toxic math somehow works in our favor if we work both smarter AND harder.
How can we actually work less and accomplish more?
By keeping sight of the mission of these machines, be they bikes or airplanes or computers or cell phones, or AI - all the central players and cast of the Third Industrial Revolution and pivoting into this Fourth Industrial Revolution are supporting roles to advance humanity forward and to serve us and not the inverse!
We have gotten it twisted and upside down - where our devices and notifications dictate the terms and demand our attention. We will either use the tools on our terms or be used by them on theirs. And you know what that means. We become the tools and we donât want to be there.
And I have an issue with an oft-recited phrase called âHuman in the Loopâ as it relates to AI, or HITL. This may be well-intentioned, but I see it more as virtue signaling of a supposed ethical use of AI - as in âdonât worry about AI taking over - we will keep humans in the loopâ
That tone casts us aside as an afterthought - once again relegating us as digital prisoners, used on their terms instead of our own. Do we as humans really want to be framed as an afterthought, doled out as a concession here or there? To me, âHuman in the Loopâ is the wrong way of framing our way forward - it should be keeping AI in our loop and not simply paying lip service and swallowing yet more empty promises made by aspiring AI overlords.
You are in control. You can unplug. You call the shots.
AI is yet another tool to serve us.
Use the tool or become the tool.
Your competition is not other companies, customers or professionals. Itâs yourself.
Itâs not about keeping the human in the loop - but you are the eye of the storm, and these various tools and tech are kept in the loop to serve you as needed. They are the tools - not you. Never!
To apply principle #12 which is âresting in the face of extreme competitionâ to your own station in life - I recommend that you invert how you have been operating. I can boil this down to a single word for you to remember - that word is âPullâ - not push. Pull the work and notifications and things to do on your terms, and not your devicesâ, tools, and tech. Pull, not push.
Be proactive and not reactive. Grace over grind. Take measured steps and think in terms of an hourglass like the one over my shoulder. If you are watching this on video, as a quick aside, I encourage you to subscribe to the Urelevant YouTube channel in addition to subscribing to this podcast! But take a measured hourglass approach instead of a stopwatch mindset.
AI affords you this luxury because you can literally 100x your productivity once you know how to use AI effectively. I have often said that with the help of AI, hours become seconds. Save time by offloading the menial and mundane to AI and reclaim those hours saved to rest and recharge.
Now on to Wright Brothers Principle #13 - They Survived Tragedies and Respected the Scarâs Reminder
What is well known is that the Wright Brothers were the first to flight. Lesser known is the story of the first plane crash fatality.
Orville Wright was flying Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge on September 17th, 1908 in Fort Meyer, Virginia on a demonstration flight which was attended by a crowd of some 2600 people. By this time, the Wrights had long since found fame which began during their celebrated flights in France, which Iâll go more into during principle #15.
But here during this ill-fated flight, which I might add that the Wrights had advanced their planes to now seat two people by this point. Their plane suffered a mechanical failure in air and dove into the ground - killing Lieutenant Selfridge and badly injuring Orville.
I bring up this story of the first flight fatality to open up relevant questions which we face today with our flights into the age of AI, and that being of ethics and personal responsibility.
It is highly unlikely that the Wright Brothers wrestled with the ethical implications of flight before they achieved it. The thought of someone dying in a plane crash was as inconceivable to someone before the invention of airplanes as the concept of a traffic fatality before the invention of the automobile.
And Orville not only lived through the first fatal plane crash, but also experienced the blessing and curse to have lived long enough to see his invention used to transport and drop atomic bombs just a couple of generations from their first flight.
The atomic bomb and its development were explored in the Academy Award winning Christopher Nolan film âOppenheimerâ based upon the Pulitzer Prize winning book âAmerican Prometheusâ by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Much like the Wright Brothers, J. Robert Oppenheimer brought forth a new era, the atomic era and leveraged the Wright Brothersâ flight era as a foundation for delivery of his breakthrough. And that is a commonly recurring theme of breakthroughs and inventions is that they stand on the shoulders of their predecessors.
And our collective advancements as a human race having reached such great heights in standing on the shoulders of such formidable predecessors naturally opens new and previously unimagined ethical questions and concerns. The realization of Oppenheimer and the theme of the film is that in some ways their world had already been destroyed, or at least life as they knew it, regardless of whether there was actual nuclear annihilation on a global scale or not. The fact that that was even a possibility and within humankindâs grasp meant that the pre-nuclear age of innocence had been lost, which leaves tough questions of philosophy to grapple with. Namely - is this new technological advancement for the greater good?
Will more people benefit than suffer from this advancement?
And with that question in mind, I want revisit the start of this series two episodes ago and the analogy from which we began. When a tree falls in the forest, the only ones to care are those whose view is improved and the unfortunate ones the tree falls on. Is it the greater good if the view of many improves, but at the expense of the few?
I guess it boils down to whom you ask - and thatâs why these significant advancements can be so polarizing â whether flight, nuclear power, or today the ushering in of AI, ready or not, these are advancements so consequential that to first do no harm is an impossibility.
The ethics are a forever debate way above most of our paygrades. But I will attempt to wrap up my answers to these ethical questions posed at the end of this episode during our final principle. But to return back to this one, the Wrights did suffer and Orville had scars and limps and aches in his broken and mended bones to serve as the scarâs reminder that not every day of flying will be a good one. And on those days you are left to second guess, and grapple with survivorâs guilt, and determine to emerge to do better and to respect the scars reminders, which leads us to our next principle.
Wright Brothers Principle #14 - Always Striving / Never Arriving aka Continual Improvement
A strange thing happened once the Wrightâs achieved flight. They built a better flier, and another, and another. I will restate a previous mantra - technology never stands still.
And that same seeking of improvement was at their core and pre-dates their Kitty Hawk success.
That continual improvement push is what led them to Kitty Hawk in the first place. The Wright Brothers had previously written to the Smithsonian Institution for any and all books on flight that they could get their hands on. They also wrote to weather stations across the United States to gather data related to wind and weather conditions, seeking optimal conditions for their experiments.
They gathered whatever data they could, and then created their own data by relentless testing, whether it be their homemade wind tunnels, or test flights in gliders. What I recognize in the Wright Brothers is what today we call a beginnerâs mindset. And this is so important for us today, as we advance in our own abilities, we musnât grow complacent or view ourselves as experts - none of us are experts with AI yet. It is simply too early.
The Wright Brothers were driven to set records which were destined to be broken, yet they went about setting them and breaking them just the same.
In the AI era, the tech will change and leapfrog.
And although none of us know how this new era will play out, we can draw clues from the birth of the Internet. I described the birth of the Internet as a slower pivot in episode 1 of Urelevant entitled âMy Pivot Storyâ if you want to learn more about what it was like when the Internet came along.
But taking clues from how things played out with the birth of the Internet, we should see similar things happen in this age of AI and I feel good about making these predictions related to AI. Rest assured that there will be a large number of AI related certifications that are either here already, or are coming soon.
These AI related certifications will begin with the baseline entry point for beginners, to establish a certain level of understanding on the part of those who attain those certifications. You will see more and more around AI Essentials and Fundamentals, as well as certifications related to Prompt Engineering, where you will need to understand the different types of prompts and their purposes and use cases.
Think of these upcoming certifications as answers to the question âWhat is AI and Why Should I Care?â and I will be holding a free live workshop soon that is actually called âWhat is AI and Why Should I Care?â so be sure to visit the link in the show description to register for that, or catch the replay if that workshop has now past. Link in the description.
And in anticipation of these types of certifications, I am also putting together AI Essentials and Prompt Engineering training courses now to help you be one of the first to become certified in this new and emerging field.
As an online instructor who has created certification courses around a lot of different exams, I can assure you that having certifications does make a difference and open doors when it comes to recruiters and hiring managers. I see no reason why the world wonât race down the path of certifications as it relates to AI as well.
In addition to AI certifications, there will be many new career paths emerge that do not exist today. One emerging path is that of Prompt Engineering. Some dismiss the crafting of prompts as easy and say that anyone can write prompts. But the same can be said of books - many think that anyone can write a book, yet few do. The problem with communications is that communicating effectively is elusive and everyone thinks they can do it naturally.
Where I see this heading is a connection between advancing tech and that advanced tech giving rise to more complex and specialized skills. Limitations with memory and computing power today will continually be overcome and improved and the prompts that can be entered or trained upon by AI will grow larger and larger - this will make prompting more powerful and much more complex - so prompt engineering will be a recognized discipline and skill and career path - I envision a day in the not too distant future where universities will be offering degrees related to prompt engineering, but much like other tech, you can forgo the college experience and race towards certification and employment much sooner than that, if you elect to do so!
But I also want to address the importance of communication. When you think of your inputs into AI to get out more effective and useful outputs, your ability to communicate becomes so important. This is once again why soft skills or what is now being referred to as durable skills are growing in importance with executives and companies.
I would like to underscore the importance of communication with a quote from Vincent Van Gogh which I recently ran across, from a book on his Complete Paintings. He said of the importance of communication âWe spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of wordsâŚWe ought to write letters that demand our whole attention and on which our fate may depend every day. It is for such reasons that men of significance invariably write wellâŚâ
I spoke in the previous episode about the Skills Graph and it will be a massive breakthrough once mastered, and to the winner go the spoils at the corporate level. To apply this to your own station in life, strive to find your unique coordinates on the skills graph and navigate your way to your uniquely optimal position. From there you can leverage the skills graph in your favor with the right combination of marketable and suddenly sought after skills. That is what relevance looks like and that gives you leverage and the fulcrum of this is your pivot.
I will share much more on the Skills Graph in the next episode of Urelevant, so be sure to subscribe. But to wrap up principle number 14 - always striving, never arriving or continual improvement â never arriving is more than ok - itâs is, in fact, ideal. Itâs a game of hot and cold and movement and action beats standing still stagnation.
Now to our 15th and final principle to round out this series which is to âBecome the Bringer of the Greater Good - Whatâs in It For Them?â
I started to unpeel the ethical onion layers in principle 13 and here in our final principle my goal is to summarize all previous principles into one final principle for you to set your own flight plan into the age of AI and that is to always strive to become the bringer of the greater good.
The Wright Brothers didnât chase accolades. Fame and fortune were not what drove them, but those were an eventual byproduct of their success. Their initial achievements were not taken seriously - thus the names of the previous episodes of âSkeptics in Kitty Hawkâ and âDoubters in Daytonâ.
It wasnât until the Wright Brothers held flight demonstrations in France, to much acclaim and fanfare, did their hometown take notice and celebrate their sudden hometown heroes. You see, few people care about what you accomplish - but everyone cares if your accomplishments do something for them.
What the Wright Brothers did for Dayton was they put their hometown ostensibly on the map. This endeared them to those they knew well - when they were starting out, it was hard for the locals to take them seriously. It is a strange phenomenon as old as time. A prophet is not welcome in their hometown, and oftentimes that which we hold as common, we eventually change our tune to âwe knew them whenâ if one of our neighbors goes on to fame.
You will see this play out every season on American Idol when the top 3 finalists return to a hometown parade of fanfare. It is not uncommon for those 3 finalists to report that they were an outcast in school, or a loner, and now suddenly everyone wants to be their friend, or they receive the keys to the city from their mayor. So odd, yet so predictable.
We are pretty simple as a human race, always have been and always will be. We often donât take notice or recognize the significance of something until we see a commotion being made and we donât want to appear out of the loop.
The Wright Brothers kept after it and didnât give up when their initial flights drew no interest. And this is why it is so important not to be driven by results, but the process, because initial reactions to what you have to offer to the world may be mixed, which can lead to disappointment and giving up too early.
Becoming the bringer of the greater good does mean asking yourself âwhatâs in it for them?â and not âwhatâs in it for meâ. The Wright Brothers developed flight fanatics in France with their accomplishments because they were so good at what they did, they grew to where they simply could not be ignored.
I want to mention another book recommendation which is âSo Good They Canât Ignore Youâ by Cal Newport and the subtitle of this book is relevant âWhy Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Loveâ
You have to become so good at something using skills you develop over time that you can no longer be ignored.
Your goal is to be the heroâs facilitator and not the hero. You want them thinking along the lines of âyou are putting us on the mapâ, much like the Wright Brothers did for Dayton.
This mindset of âwhatâs in it for themâ and becoming the bringer of the greater good means you will strive to be a problem solver, not a problem creator.
And problem solving is the intersection of hard and soft skills - it is where they meet - this should be your target moving forward into the unknown of AI.
So be sure to join me in the coming weeks as we fly into the future of AI and discover the skills graph, problem solving, new AI jobs and career paths, and a whole lot more only here on Urelevant!