A pet peeve of mine is going through planning or R&D work and hearing “this can’t be done”.
Admittedly, I’ve pushed back in client conversations for the sake of avoiding scope creep or refocusing the conversation on what’s dealt at hand. But in almost all cases, impossible means:
- too expensive
- too complicated
- can’t wrap my head around it
- doesn’t seem easily accomplishable
- existing resources aren’t able to deliver
- may take an infinite number of experiments to get to the desired state
And seemingly my birthday this year has started with a series of “impossibility-obeying moves”, right around midnight I stumbled upon this Mr Beast episode at the MFM podcast, going over Jimmy’s playbook (that leaked on X in 2024) and redefining the impossible or what “no” means:
Two of the summaries on the podcast are “Impossible is possible” and “No doesn’t mean no way”.
Great food for thought hear.
There’s also an Elon quote from X on impossibility:
“Physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation.”
This may be slightly exaggerated in the form of longevity or immortality (where chemistry, biology, and other sciences are involved), but the premise remains the same.
The richest man on Earth wouldn’t have built rockets, satellites, self-driving cars etc. had he believed in impossibility.
We set our own boundaries more often than not.
In fact, most people set far too many boundaries, led by societal norms and expectations, and while being a community citizen is even a core value at DevriX, this doesn’t mean being shallow, or limited, or failing to innovate, or thinking too small, or setting low expectations in disbelief of possibilities.
With literally tens of millions of “entrepreneurs” out there (probably hundreds of millions globally), it’s unreasonable to stick to impossibility so much.
- Hundreds of years ago, owning a business was a luxury. Think about the Dark Ages and castles and the only innovation happening in merchants, but then think of bards, and travelers, and storytellers, and mercenaries, and many more fractions for hire (still possible)
- The current state of innovation allows for more autonomy, freedom of speech, access to data and principles that the leading companies have
- What seems “impossible” may be a call, an email, or a direct message away. Again, in the 1400s taking an effort at a continent that may or may not exist yet, because it had not been discovered yet as flat earthers were still dominating that, and phones weren’t a real thing (let alone email)
Many concepts we trust on and rely today – cars, planes, Internet, phones, video conversations, were seen as impossible centuries or even decades ago.
Lastly, you can dig in the Internet – forums like HackerNews or Reddit or regular forums (and even social networks) for comments on disbelief and distrust in technologies or brands we use daily now:
This particular excerpt outlines laughters and jokes after Dropbox, Cursor, Bitcoin, Instacart, Threads – as applications that are impossible to build or make no sense in the world.
Airbnb was also quoted as something that would never pass any regulations, and no VC should touch it, ever.
We often tend to forget what reality looked like 5, 10, 20 years ago. The more we age, the longer the lifespan we can compare with.
But haters are gonna hate, and trusting the current status quo is no guarantee for the possibilities to undertake at work, at life, with current accomodations, current career plans, KPIs and target earnings, entrepreneurship, or any other endeavor (hobbies and life choices).
