Patrick Collison's collection of examples of people and organizations that did ambitious things quickly - from the Empire State Building (410 days) to the SR-71 Blackbird.
“Every time someone says 'that's impossible in that timeline,' I send them this page. The lesson isn't that speed is always possible - it's that our default expectations for how long things take are wildly miscalibrated.”
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The Apollo program timeline is the one that always gets me. From 'we choose to go to the moon' to actually landing - 7 years. With 1960s technology. We've collectively lost the ability to think on that timescale.
What's common to all these examples is a small team with high autonomy and a clear deadline. The moment you add layers of approval and consensus-seeking, speed dies. Speed is an organizational choice.
I keep this page bookmarked for whenever someone tells me a 6-week project needs to be 6 months. Not every project can be fast - but the default assumption that things must be slow is almost always wrong.