A good biography with some good psychological history in a recent WSJ profile of U.S. Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. I like this quote and think it’s very applicable to legal entrepreneurs:
“In so many areas of life, you need to be a long-term optimist but a short-term realist. That’s especially true given the inherent dangers in aviation. You can’t be a wishful thinker. You have to know what you know and don’t know, and what your airplane can and can’t do in every situation.”
That’s very consistent with what Jim Collins labeled the Stockdale Paradox in Good to Great. The idea that you should have long-term faith that you’ll be successful but you also must have the day-to-day discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.
