Nikola Tesla

Many projects have failed because creativity and idealism took precedence over planning and budgeting. A proverb says, “Stretch your legs according to the size of your quilt.” A similar saying advises, “Stretch your arm no further than your sleeve will reach.”16 These sayings are not intended to kill your dreams and ambitions but only to remind you to live within your means and not dream of things you cannot achieve.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was a talented inventor, engineer, physicist, and futurist. Born in the Austrian Empire (now Croatia), Tesla immigrated in 1884 to the United States to work with Thomas Edison. With financial backers, Tesla soon set up his own laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices.

With his brilliant mind, he “invented, predicted or contributed to development of hundreds of technologies that play big parts in our daily lives—like the remote control, neon and fluorescent lights, wireless transmission, computers, smartphones, laser beams, x-rays, robotics and, of course, alternating current, the basis of our present-day electrical system.”17 With funding from a group of investors, in 1901, Tesla began to build a lab with a power plant and a tower able to transmit electricity all over the world. Eventually, the investors, worried about profit, withdrew their financial backing. Ultimately, in 1917, the US government demolished the unfinished tower for fear that German spies would use it to intercept communications during World War I.

The great inventor lived the final years of his life in social isolation and financial poverty. He died on January 7, 1943, in his modest hotel room in New York City. It’s good to be idealistic and dream great dreams—if they can be achieved.

Plan projects that will succeed and live within your budget, even if it means living a simpler life.