Terri Gross asked, what image did you have of breaking the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager responded (1988).
“I didn’t give any thought to it to tell you the truth. I was duty oriented at that time. I’d been in a war where a lot of guys got killed and learned to concentrate on what I was doing and forget about the outcome because you can’t do a lot about it anyway. “
Chuck Yeager
Like Fermi Knowledge, this encapsulates a full idea. With Fermi Knowledge it was the question: do I know this so well I can figure it out again? For duty oriented the question is: am I focused on the things I can control to the best of my ability?
It was in 1947 that Yeager broke the sound barrier, Tom Wolfe wrote, “Yeager had always figured it was useless to try to punch out of a rocket plane.”
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ps, it’s great that we can hear the man in his own words, with his steady confidence. If you create content, please consider that in 33 years someone will be looking for these ideas again and hidden behind a paywall those ideas will die.
The Waiter's Pad 