It’s fun to do the impossible — Walt Disney

It’s fun to do the impossible

Author: Walt Disney

Insight: There's something almost rebellious about pursuing what everyone agrees can't be done. When Disney said this, he wasn't being motivational in the expected way—he was describing an actual feeling, the genuine pleasure that comes from tackling something supposedly impossible. That pleasure is real and worth paying attention to, because it's different from the satisfaction of simply succeeding at something hard. The trick is recognizing that "impossible" is often just another word for "nobody's bothered trying yet" or "the conventional wisdom says no." Throughout history, the supposedly impossible tasks—flying, landing on the moon, building a computer that fits in your pocket—were mostly blocked by people's imaginations rather than actual physics. When you strip away the assumption that something can't be done, you sometimes find it actually can be. The catch is that this only works if you actually enjoy the process. Disney wasn't advocating for miserable grinding in pursuit of glory. He was saying that the fun is embedded in the attempt itself, in the moment when you're figuring out how to do what shouldn't be possible. That's worth chasing—not because success is guaranteed, but because the work itself has a particular energy that routine tasks simply don't offer.

Source: It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -Walt Disney