The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers

INTRODUCTION

When not crashing their flying machine prototype into the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright spent large swaths of time sitting on the beach watching birds and imitating their movements. At least, that is how it appeared to the locals who took notice. “We couldn’t help thinking they were just a pair of poor nuts,” recounted Kitty Hawk resident John T. Daniels. “They’d stand on the beach for hours at a time, just looking at the gulls flying, soaring, dipping. They would watch the gannets and imitate the movements of their wings with their arms and hands. They could imitate every movement of those gannets; we thought they were crazy, but we just had to admire the way they could move their arms this ...