In this post I'll be going in a different direction compared to the posts I've written so far. It's been a long time that I have this thought going through my mind, hopefully it will make more sense (to me mostly) in written form. These thoughts center on the role optimism plays in my professional life.
I'm generally a very optimistic person, and I believe that for a lot of problems, at least within my area of work (software development, or - more broadly - technology), a solution exists. I'll avoid making considerations about other fields, because that's not my area of expertise nor where I'm best suited to comment on innovation. Part of the beauty of this job is the almost limitless possibility to experiment, fail and try again. This outlook has led me to champion and take part in several "moonshots" over the years, ranging from cloud provider migrations to complex code refactoring to generate cost savings. A more cautious mindset would have probably avoided all these projects ("No one gets fired for buying an IBM" - ca. late 1990s) but so far they seem to have all paid off. I'm now taking another moonshot with some AI projects, let's see where they will go.
In general, I think that an optimistic mindset helps with creativity and problem solving, which are two fundamental components of innovation. If you are not optimistic, it's hard to see how things could be done differently, you need hope about something to be able to work towards that goal.
In a business setting, you'll need optimism in leadership to be able to push beyond what's currently being done, and optimism in the individual contributors to be able to work in the best possible way. Optimism also helps with risk taking, as it would reduce the hesitation and the fear of failure. I have experienced contrast and pushbacks sometimes on my ideas, and sometimes I'm the one pushing back. But pushback is also good! It helps to either reinforce the idea, or throw it away "cheaply" and replace with a new one.
Optimism helps me solve problems every day. If I can visualise in my mind what I want to achieve (the "solution"), it's much easier to move in that gradient towards it (pardon the ML analogy). For example if I know that I need to do some incremental data processing to generate cost savings, if I know that the end goal is that I first worry about the ideal state, and then I more or less slowly change things piece by piece until they approximate the solution in a way that satisfies me.
Optimism helps innovators, because it builds resilience against setbacks and is the fuel behind the generation of new ideas. The greatest example of that today is what SpaceX is achieving, just a few weeks ago they showed the world that they can launch and catch back a rocket with what look like giant chopsticks. That's insane, and even if you have a lot of the best people in the world working there, it's not realism or pessimism that made that even be considered as an idea.
The path isn't always easy, and you need to balance between optimism and realism (in fact, that's probably the realist side of me that's trying to balance this very article now). You can't always do moonshots, you can't always win, in fact if the goals are really hard you'll probably lose a lot, possibly all the time on those. Also you need to be careful to not purposefully lie, and disclose when a take is optimistic to avoid creating unrealistic expectations in people who are less prone to risk (e.g. investors, but that would also be fraud probably). Therefore, to properly be able to achieve things, you need to alternate difficult, but achievable things (things that are just one step beyond what's currently being done) and things where it's impossible to exactly see the "how". You only barely know the final state you want to be in, sometimes not even that, just a flaky idea.
Optimism has been a cornerstone of my way of living and working, and I rarely regret making a decision driven by optimism. Despite challenges and things not always going as planned, embracing optimism has been a net positive for me. I have been blocked before by pessimism or excessive realism, and those choices I always ended up regretting because they led me to stay still, not move forward, not innovate. Optimism will continue to propel me forward. By putting these thoughts into words, I hope to inspire my future self—and perhaps others—to push forward despite risks and uncertainties.