The parallels between a career and mountain biking

For those that don’t know, for the past two years I have suffered from a mountain biking addiction.

Rarely a weekend goes by without multiple bike rides, spare hours are filled with watching mountain biking videos, and talking about mountain bikes with anyone that will listen. (Sorry if you weren’t interested).

Over this time, I have noticed some similarities between mountain biking and my career.

Progress is fast at the beginning, but slows afterwards

Taking up a new sport is a pleasant reminder that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks, as the rate of progression is fast in the early days. When everything is a new experience, you feel like you are making massive progress…and that’s because you are.

At the beginning, it’s easy to build confidence by knocking over easy features, but progress slows as your level of competency increases.

This is similar in a career too. In the early days, you are building up your knowledge, progressing from a beginner to an intermediate to a supervisor and then a manager. But once you’re the boss, where to next?

The rate at which you progress can be disheartening after progressing so fast at the beginning. Some things that have kept me motivated are tracking my progress to see the incremental progress being made each ride, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Be aware of the obstacles, but don’t fixate on them:

In riding, there is a term called ‘target fixation’. It’s where you end up crashing into the thing you keep looking at. Your body naturally goes where you are looking.

In mountain biking, at the beginning you tend to look at all the big features, everything that looks dangerous. The tree sticking out, the rock to be avoided, the steep decline.

And what usually happens? You hit that object! The exact thing you wanted to avoid.

In life, it’s easy to become fixated on the negatives, on the obstacles. To struggle to see the forest from the trees.

Be aware the obstacles are there, but don’t fixate on them, don’t be held back by them.

Like most things in life, our worries don’t always come true, and when they do, they usually aren’t as bad as we thought.

When mountain biking now, some of the features that use to scare me don’t even register anymore. It’s the same when you push through your career barriers too.

You need to seek out new experiences

Yes you can continue to improve by doing the same thing over and over again. You might become faster, more proficient, but you will also likely become stale.

This has been a big lesson for me as I will, for the convenience more than anything, ride at my local location regularly. As a result, I do the same course over and over again, only to get burnt out.

Over time, the features do become easier, and my overall times become faster, but I am also restricting myself from riding harder destinations where my skills might progress much quicker due to a steeper learning curve.

A quick trip to a new destination brings back the thrill of riding. New work opportunities and new learning and work experiences feels the same.

Look where you want to go

In mountain biking, you usually go where you are looking or aiming. It’s the same in your career. If you work at something long enough, you’re likely to achieve your end goal.

Mountain biking has really reinforced for me the importance of goal setting. Each ride, I will try to do something I have never done before. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I can’t think of the last time I set that same goal in my career. It’s crazy to think about that, as I spend a much larger proportion of my time working than I do riding.

Ultimately, I am on track to achieve my career goals, but more frequent goal setting might just speed up the process. It certainly helps progress mountain biking skills faster.

So there you have it, four key similarities between mountain biking and my career. It would be easy to also write about the benefits of coaching, of riding with better riders, and the joy of riding/working with friends. No doubt there are plenty more, but for now, I'd rather be riding.