Don't Think, Just Do
A note after watching Top Gun Maverick
Note: This post will make no sense to you if you haven’t watched Top Gun movies. If you haven’t watched them, do check out both Top Gun movies.
Flashback
I was introduced to the first Top Gun movie when I was an intern at the Aerospace Department of Indian Institute Science. One day the prof came to me with a pen drive and told me to watch a couple of movies. Back then I had a red Dell laptop which I had got after much fighting with my mom. Almost a decade later Top Gun Maverick was released and I wasn’t as excited to watch it. But as all good things happen in my life, I started it accidentally.
The Movie Experience
The first hour of the movie was a tad boring to be honest. I gave up multiple times during the first one hour. Here’s a top class pilot who’s not getting promoted and his rival/admirer, Iceman, at Top Gun has reached higher echelons of the navy.
Maverick is being humiliated by a middle-man type admiral played by John Hamm. The ace pilot is asked to work as an instructor at Top Gun after disobeying another order by his superiors. The individual contributor is now asked to be a team leader. And Maverick is not ready.
But he gives it a shot because his rival and admirer Iceman asks him to help the navy. To make matters complicated, Goose’s son, Rooster, is part of top gun. For context, Goose is Maverick’s close friend and wingman at Top Gun who died accidentally during practice. Maverick doesn’t want to risk Roosters’ life. But at the same time, he is accused of stifling Goose’s career in his attempt to protect him.
Adrenaline levels and tension skyrocketed during the last one hour of the movie. Though I knew the mission would be successful anyway, I did not think of all possible drama that could happen during the course of the mission. I was thoroughly entertained by the movie.
There are intense emotions at play and of course there’s a difficult mission with a power-packed dog fight sequence. But Top Gun Maverick doesn’t dilute the intensity and powerful storytelling of the movie franchise.
Instinct, Guts and Glory
Very often, instincts play a big role in deciding whether you win or lose. But it requires a fundamental philosophical framework to make instincts work in your favour. Sometime, if the philosophical framework is wrong or inappropriate, it always leads to bad results.
I have been playing with the idea of balancing instincts with rational logic. Though Maverick seems to be an instinctive guy, he is very organised in his thinking. A difficult mission can be safely achieved only if you can push the pilot to the limits and execute with precision. And to achieve the specific target, the pilot has to believe that he/she is born to achieve the miracle.
If the team had chosen a less risky execution plan where they were not pushing the limits of sane flying, they would have died during the mission anyway. So Maverick is perhaps a very aggressive rational person.
It’s not mindless statement when he says “Don’t Think, Just Do”. It means — push your limits and attain glory. Instinct in this context is not a random act that is performed with no thought process. It is a desire to be insanely good. It requires insane confidence and belief. It requires a killer instinct that will simply flatten the opponent.
So, here’s my new funda.
Instinct is rational logic plus confidence — on steroids.