Not You

I have a friend who was (maybe still is) a consulting engineer. He designs specialized hardware and software for industry. He has had plenty of work in his life.

He once recounted a moment that occurred early in his consulting career. He was tasked with solving a problem for a large corporation. He drove to the company's headquarters to meet with their management, and he saw a parking lot filled with thousands of cars. "There are hundreds of engineers working here," he thought. "How can I, just one person, solve a problem that hundreds of other engineers have failed to solve?"

But he entered the building and met the managers and the engineers, and he studied their problem and he devised a solution for them. He told me that he learned a lesson from that early job. "No matter how many employees a company has, all of those employees working together are only as smart as the smartest person among them."

So if you're facing a problem that no one can solve, that doesn't mean you can't solve it. You just have to be a little smarter, know a little more, think a little deeper, try a little harder, than others have done before you. You can solve a problem that hundreds, maybe thousands, have failed to solve. Never be intimidated by the failure of others. They're not you.

That is worth remembering.