Scientists in Wales recently discovered that humans returned to Britain 500 years earlier than previously thought following the ice age.

Apparently, people moved in while the ice was still retreating, long before it was "safe" or "ready."

Fifteen thousand years later, this same risk-taking instinct can be observed in modern humans, most notably in vibe coders running “--dangerously-skip-permissions” mode.

It seems progress has been laughing in the face of permission for millennia.

P.s. More action awaits you in our archives, including how Steve Jobs cultivated great taste, the personality trait shared by 1381 millionaires, and why when you’re launching something new, you need social dandelions.

Only losers need the conditions to be perfect

On the early evening of August 14, 1936, Adolf Hitler stood on a balcony above the Olympic rowing course on the outskirts of Berlin.

The Führer was in a good mood. Germany had won the previous five races of the day.

The whole Olympics had been a propaganda staging effort. The city was covered in swastikas and the Nazis had cleared Berlin's Gypsies and homeless from the streets. Leni Riefenstahl was filming it all, building a movie intended to project German supremacy to the world.

But at the starting line, one mile away, nine young American men backed their racing boat into lane six—determined to spoil the narrative.

They had crossed a continent on a train and an ocean on a steamship to make it there. Back home in Seattle, the city had raised five thousand dollars in forty-eight hours just to pay their way to Berlin. Prior to that, their lungs had burned through three years of intense competition and training. All leading to this moment.

Then the starting flag dropped and four boats launched off the line.

The American boat just floated there.

The wind had pulled the starter’s voice away from their lane, which was on the most exposed edge of the course, and so they never heard him.

By the time the cox realized and yelled "Row!", they were already down by a stroke and a half. Their hopes seemed dashed before their oars had even touched the water.

For three hundred meters they fought to catch up. The cox yanked on the steering ropes to keep the bow straight against the crosswinds that threatened to swing the boat sideways. The men eventually found their stride, and as their eight oars swung together, they began gaining ground. For a moment, it looked like they might still be in this.

Then their pacesetter, Don Hume, turned a deathly shade of white.

Hume had been fighting a chest infection and fever that wouldn't leave for weeks. That morning, the coach had said he was too sick to row, but the team had refused to race without him.

He kept rowing, but his head was bobbing, his eyes nearly closed, and his mouth hung open. He no longer seemed to know where he was.

The cox screamed at him but Hume couldn't hear.

The man setting the pace had stopped being able to set anything.

For nine hundred meters Hume stayed gone. The boat slowly fell back to fifth, then last. By the halfway mark, the Americans were five seconds behind the leaders. The cox screamed at Hume but Hume did not look up.

At twelve hundred meters, the cox decided to do the unthinkable. He would have someone else take over the pacesetting from Hume mid-race. It had never been done but he had no other move.

As he leaned forward to give the order, Hume suddenly jolted back to life and locked eyes with the cox. "Pick 'er up!" the cox yelled. Hume did.

The Americans started picking off boats. Fifth to third in a few strokes. Third to second a few strokes later. By the home stretch, trees lined both banks and the wind dropped to nothing. The boat soared ahead and they took the lead with 200 meters left.

Hitler lowered his binoculars, sensing thousands of smiles slipping in the stands.

As the boats approached the finish, the crowd's "Deutsch-land! Deutsch-land! Deutsch-land!" chant was deafening.

Germany and Italy had surged back and all three boats were now dead even.

The cox needed to tell the boys to row faster than they had ever rowed. He was screaming it but the team couldn’t hear him over the chants from the stands.

So he improvised.

He hammered the boat's frame with the two wooden grips he used to steer the boat.

Whack, whack, whack, whack.

The team felt the rhythm through the wood and knew what it meant.

They had never rowed faster than forty strokes per minute in their lives. They climbed past it. Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four. Ten percent faster than they thought it was possible to row.

All three boats, Italy, Germany, and the United States, crossed the finish line in the same second.

None of them knew who had crossed first.

Then the announcement came from the loudspeakers.

The Americans had beaten the Italians by six-tenths of a second.

The crowd’s chants died in midair.

As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played over muted applause, Hitler left the balcony in silence.

How many of us believe we need our conditions to be perfect to perform at our best?

We pray for the weather to hold, for everyone to show up, for the technology to work.

But these hopes are in vein.

The conditions will go to shit. That's about the only sure bet. If not this time, almost certainly the next.

Being the best of the best means you don't need the conditions to be perfect.

In fact, like the 1936 rowing champs, you may even do your best work precisely when everything is going to hell in a hand basket—when you don’t hear the starter, when the wind is blowing you off course, when your star member is semi-conscious, and when the chants of your haters are so loud that you can’t hear yourself.

Pray instead that your preparation, your spirit, and your capacity to improvise can trump whatever catastrophes come to derail you. That’s the stuff champions are made of.

The next time things go sideways, remember: excellence makes its own weather.

Final Calls To Action

• Want to understand the implications of recent advances in tech, culture, and product design? If so, Scott Belsky's monthly analysis is essential reading. In his latest May edition, Scott explores how pioneering artists are using AI as a precision chisel rather than a shortcut, the growing (and increasingly polarizing) debate between biological longevity and computational immortality, and why cognitive expansion > not cognitive offloading.

• This week I stumbled across a bestselling author and speaker who swears by the Action Method Book to get things done. “If I'm not making something, I'm not happy,” he said. “To me ABC means Always Be Creating.” Turns out he uses Action Books to manage his podcast, newsletter, client work, and a number of special projects. Your ideas deserve the same momentum. Shop the Action Method.

• Curious to dive deeper on the story in today’s edition? We recommend reading The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown.

Thanks for subscribing, and sharing anything you’ve learned with your teams and networks (let us know what you think and share ideas: @ActionDigest).