What is the biggest obstacle you have faced professionally?

Originally asked

The American Academy of Achievement, to its honourees, its oral-history interviews

The Academy of Achievement repeatedly asks honorees to identify a major professional obstacle or challenge and describe confronting it.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Steve Jobs said elsewhere, not written here
At Pixar when we were making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn't great. It just wasn't great. We stopped production for five months.... We paid them all to twiddle their thumbs while the team perfected the story into what became Toy Story. And if they hadn't had the courage to stop, there would have never been a Toy Story the way it is, and there probably would have never been a Pixar.

Betsy Morris, Fortune interview, Kona, Hawaii, 7 March 2008 source ↗

Others on this question

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Mohamed ElBaradei Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2009; Nobel Peace Prize 2005
No. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out quite that way. At that time, everybody was euphoric that we will have a new world order, you know, a world order that does not rely on nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. ... We still have thousands of warheads in existence. We still have more than 20 — 30 countries relying on nuclear deterrence for their own survival.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 2006 source ↗

Tony Judt Historian and essayist
This cockroach-like existence is cumulatively intolerable even though on any given night it is perfectly manageable. “Cockroach” is of course an allusion to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into an insect. The point of the story is as much the responses and incomprehension of his family as it is the account of his own sensations, and it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims.

Recorded The New York Review of Books, 14 January 2010 issue, 14 January 2010 source ↗

Katalin Karikó Biochemist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2023
Adam, if you know about 10 years ago, I was here in October because I was kicked out, from Penn, was forced to retire. Then my husband supported me and said that, you know, when finally visited in Germany and found that maybe BioNTech is the right place, then he said "Just try it and I will make sure that you don't regret." Looking back in my life he supported that I would go, and for nine years I commuted to BioNTech in Germany. I did all these experiments actually, with my own hands, I was 58 years old, I was still culturing plasmids and feeding cells, so it is very unlikely.

Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, October 2023, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 October 2023 source ↗

I realized that the biggest obstacle was my mind. It was the biggest obstacle, and if I could get out of the way of myself, I would grow. So every time I had that attitude, I changed it, and I’d say, “You can. Today you can, and take it one day at a time, and today, I’m going to get up and I’m not going to think about the other six days of this week. I’m going to get up right now, and I’m going to go to the gym, and I’m going to learn about my boxing, and I’m going to be in the moment.” You know, in anything, you hit a wall, and then you have to break through it, and I just had to get out of my own way.

Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Los Angeles, California, 1 April 2006 source ↗

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Question What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? Time & hindsight
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Recorded Stanford University 114th Commencement, Stanford News (Stanford University), 12 June 2005 source ↗

Question What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? Craft & work
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

Recorded Betsy Morris, Fortune interview, Kona, Hawaii, March 2008 source ↗

Question What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Time & hindsight
I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life.

Recorded Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗

Question What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? Craft & work
We called that the 'story crisis,' and we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film. We don't stop production for five months. We've gotten a little smarter about it. But there always seems to come a moment where it's just not working, and it's so easy to fool yourself - to convince yourself that it is when you know in your heart that it isn't.

Recorded Betsy Morris, Fortune interview, Kona, Hawaii, March 2008 source ↗

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