Uphills and downhills
Another cycling analogy here (last one I promise!). This one is about momentum. For me, cycling to work is divided into three very clear types of terrain: downhill (easy), flat (neutral) and uphill (hard). After a long day, those uphills can take a lot out of me and I’m not the only one struggling.
But this post is about what people do on the downhills and flats. Every now and again, I’ll see a cyclist on the same route who takes it REALLY slow on those parts. I can understand that – conserving energy for the hills, I guess. But here’s the thing: on my route most of those downhills or flats end in a hill and the faster you take the easy parts the more momentum you build for the hills. Approach a hill slowly and you have to work so much harder to make progress. Whereas if you take advantage of the momentum you can build on the easy or neutral sections, half the work is done for you when you hit that hard section.
Production isn’t cycling but it still has its easy parts, neutral parts and its hard parts. There will be challenges. There will be struggles. So the more you can take advantage of the easy and neutral parts, the better. You can get that momentum going, you can build a bank of great work, make plans for the tougher sections ahead, create any buffers possible and buy you that bit of extra leeway for when things get hard. And they will get hard at times.
Even if you can take it easy… don’t. Keep pedalling.
