How to think like a Wright brother

How many of you have thought that those that engineered our worlds greatest inventions were special. They had some kind of super intelligence that the rest of us simple minded lacked. How many of you realized that the people who made these great achievements were as normal as the rest of us.

The Wright brothers are a great example, of normal people making an impact on our world. Hopefully you have heard of the Wright brothers before now, but in case you have forgotten they are the ones responsible for our knowledge of flight. They made the first ever flying machine that actually flew. Yes, without them we probably would only have learned to fly decades later. Our planes and commercial air craft would probably not exist, or at least they would not be as advanced as they are.

Now you may be thinking, surely the Wright brothers (Orville and Wilbur respectively) had some kind of advantage over their fellow man. In truth they lacked what many had, they never had a college education, and they never had the type of government funding many flight pioneers had in the time period. In the normal view of things the Wright brothers should never have been able to build their flying machine. However the brothers looked at thing differently.

We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity. (Orville Wright)

The Wright brother always believed they could achieve anything through hard work. They were offered money by a few investors, but they turned the offers down, albeit graciously, insisting that they would pave their own way.

Now the title of this blog gives you the impression that by reading this you will be able to have the masterful intelligence the Wright brothers possessed. Unfortunately, there is no intelligence to pass on. The real lesson from the Wright brothers is perseverance. They never gave up even when their machine failed, or was destroyed by an accident. No matter the case each knew that they could succeed if they simply tried hard enough. In truth there are three steps the Wright brothers took that many others from the time period missed.

1) Observe what works, and what doesn't

The Wright brothers spent most of their spare time studying the birds, the only true flying machine of the era. The observed the angles, that birds held their wing and how the treated different environments and outside interference. They learned the way things work from Gods flawless design. They also took time to observe the flight attempts of that time period. They took notes of the design of failures and success before designing their own machine.

The picture above is their first gliding machine the built, unlike most designers of the time period they didn't try to create their machine in on leap. This takes us to step two.

2) Test your ideas, yourself

Unlike many of the scientists and engineers of the period the Wright brothers spent a great deal of time actually trying their machine out. Yes, believe it or not testing is one of the most important parts of thinking like a Wright brother is trying out your ideas. It is the key the Wright brothers used to fix flaws in their machine and eventually obtain success.

And now to the final step.

3) Persevere, persevere, and persevere

If the Wright brothers had quite after their first failure, or their second. Or if they had left Kitty Hawk because of the storm or mosquitoes. They never would have invented their flying machine. It was perseverance, that saw them through and it is perseverance that solve one of the worlds most troubling problems. This is the secret that the Wright brothers used for success.

So you can see that the Wright brothers in fact didn't posses anything overly special. They were just average people like the rest of us. The secret of the Wright brothers is the didn't let their being average hinder them in any way. In fact they accepted it as motivation to continue and, persevere.

So next time you see a problem in the world don't take it sitting down. Go out, discover, build fix the problem. Don't think that you need a super intelligence or some advance method of thinking. Observe, test, persevere and you to can make the world a better place.