Perspective changes the size of the jump
A day at the lakes in Afghanistan, and why risk always looks bigger up close.
I remember this as a beautiful day in Afghanistan. Together with my guides, I spent a full day at these lakes, hiking, sharing a picnic, and taking in a landscape that felt almost unreal in scale. At one point, they started crossing from one rock to another.
Capturing that moment made me realize something: the most interesting part of the photo is not the landscape. It is the gap. Up close, it looked like a massive leap, the space between the rocks seeming wider than it probably was. Viewed from further away, the distance did not feel nearly as dramatic.
Proximity distorts perception
That is how many decisions in business appear from the outside. When someone is at the edge of a new move, scaling, investing, entering a new market, changing direction, the risk often looks amplified. The closer you are to uncertainty, the larger it appears.
Distance changes that. It lets you focus on fundamentals rather than emotion, and assess the actual gap instead of the feeling it creates. In many cases the leap itself is not as big as it seems. What is usually underestimated is how prepared the person already is.
Sometimes progress is not about pushing harder. It is about seeing the situation from the right distance.
And for those wondering: I did not dare to follow them. I stayed on the edge of the cliff, watching.