Adam Steltzner

Our curious search for truth and understanding makes us unique compared with the other creatures on this planet. Our search drives strange behaviors, creates strange inventions, and appears crazy at times, but it just might be the right kind of crazy.

As with many people, or perhaps all of us, my greatest strengths, when concentrated too heavily, become my greatest weaknesses.

As I drove home that night, I kept thinking about this movement in the sky—what I’d now call celestial mechanics—and for the first time in a long, long while, I was deeply curious about something. And that curiosity changed my life.

With each of these steps, I committed more, to life, to the present—to risking more. I would bring myself more fully to my life, both professional and personal. My work was changing me, and I in turn would try to change it.

Nothing puts more weight into your opinion than that it is well considered, well articulated, and coming from a high performer. If you want people to take you seriously, better put your head down and be useful to them.

Anybody can come up with a wild idea. It’s this 99 percent perspiration—implementation—that’s in some sense the true test.

This is the point at which Tom Rivellini reminded me of the old saying, ‘The coward dies a thousand deaths.’ There’s plenty of time to confront ‘the worst’ if it comes to that, so there’s no point rushing ahead to assume that you’ve reached it. Today I tell my teams, ‘Just keep working, and if death comes to visit us, let us be surprised.’ Where there is will and ingenuity, there has always been a way.