I think Netflix missed the work
I wasn’t sure if waking up at 0100 to watch Netflix was a good idea, but it was Alex Honnold free solo climbing a skyscraper—this was not your normal binge. And my two younger kids wanted to watch as well. (I was a little unsure about that… if there’d been one slip.)
I found Free Solo—the documentary about his free solo climb of El Capitan—captivating, exhilarating and awe-inspiring in equal measures. He is clearly an outlier and quite a remarkable human, but that’s not the story. For the unaware, free solo is climbing alone with no ropes or support of any kind—one slip and it’s game over.
A skyscraper in Taiwan is a far cry from the granite slab in Yosemite. The first thing that struck me was the proximity. When Alex climbed El Capitan the cameramen were distant, staying out of sight—he wanted no distraction. It was truly solo. As he scaled the slabs of glass and aluminium in Taipei, he was in the viewfinder of thousands of waving, selfie-taking spectators. This was different—very different.
And I think there’s a significant transformation here, one lost in the commentary. On El Capitan he was alone. Here, he’d invited distraction in. That’s a huge evolution.
Alex looked so at ease as he moved up the building. He smiled. He waved at onlookers hundreds of feet below. He stood on impossibly small ledges and pulled on strips of metal as if they were handholds designed for it. I’m sure the editors wanted the drama and risk to be the main story—that’s the one they sold. The press picked it up too: if he slipped, he would surely die. It’s a superficial, some might say lazy headline. I guess it gets clicks.
But there was something troubling about it as entertainment: this was “live viewing” of a life-or-death challenge—or was it? I think that’s where the really interesting, barely mentioned point sits.
His preparation. His training. His focus. His transformation.
This wasn’t high risk. There were significant consequences, yes, but the risk itself wasn’t high—because he had trained it all away. So much so that he was willing to let people in.
He was asked in an interview if his approach to risk had changed since having children. He replied, slightly bemused: he didn’t want to die before kids either.
The documentary focused on the goal, the summit—everyone always looks to the bloody goal. They paid lip service to his training regime on screen. The real story is how he got there: the 99.9% of time spent preparing, not the 0.1% of the final climb.
To most who watched it live, I’m sure there were plenty of reactions. But I wonder how many thought: I could put in the work needed to reach my goal.
My point is, sadly, because the show obsessed over the drama and the risk of the big goal, it didn’t gift the audience something this world dearly needs: a relentless focus on process.
Stop looking at the finish line. Obsess about the process. Obsess about the day-to-day. Make it count. Make it count more often than you don’t. That’s progress.
If you want to climb like Alex, you have to spend the hours in the gym doing wide-armed chin-ups on your fingertips—repeatedly, and then more. You have to operate with distraction at the exact moment you must be most intensely focused. That requires an unimaginable control of your thoughts and attention.
If you want to climb a skyscraper in Taipei, you have to obsess over the process. We know he did. Netflix failed to show it, and turned something remarkable into a stunt. I dearly hope there’s a follow-up—a look behind the curtain. I want to see the work. I want to understand the transformation, the evolution.
Maybe that’s just me. But I think that’s what we need to see more of.