When we want to reach a star that is light-years away, we have two choices.
1. The Urgent Launch (Go Now)
We launch today with the best engine we have. We leave immediately. It feels like progress because we are moving.
But the moment we launch, we lock ourselves into today’s constraints. We can no longer upgrade. Our top speed is capped by what we knew at the start. We spend centuries drifting through the void, watching the Earth shrink behind us, doing the best we can with obsolete tools.
2. The Patient Build (Work on Speed)
We stay on Earth. We don’t launch. We watch the first rocket disappear into the black.
We spend the next 10 years just building a faster engine. It feels like stagnation because we are standing still while others are “miles ahead.” We fight the itch to just go.
Then, we launch.
Because our new velocity is exponentially higher, we don’t just catch up; we blow past the first rocket. We arrive at the destination decades earlier, while the first crew is still halfway there, staring at our taillights.
The Core Dilemma: “Lightspeed Leapfrog”
Imagine we send a ship today that takes 50 years to reach a distant planet. Alternatively, we wait 10 years for technology to improve, then launch a ship that can make the trip in only 10 years.
- Ship 1 arrives in Year 50.
- Ship 2 launches in Year 10, travels for 10, and arrives in Year 20.
The second ship arrives 30 years before the first one.
The nightmare for the pioneers on the first ship is that they spend their generations in transit, only to land and be greeted by “future” humans who have already been living there for centuries.
The Lesson
This is the Wait Calculation: there is a mathematical point where waiting to improve the rate of travel is faster than traveling immediately.
In our careers and projects, urgency satisfies the anxiety of “not doing enough.” It feels safer to be busy. But true speed is the result of capacity.
- Urgency = Emotional Relief: When we are anxious about a goal, sitting still (even to learn or build tools) feels wrong. Being “busy” soothes that anxiety because it looks like work.
- Capacity = Actual Speed: True velocity doesn’t come from pedaling harder on a tricycle; it comes from stopping to build a race car.
If the journey is long enough, the one who waits to build a better engine will always beat the one who rushes to start.