{"id":1322,"date":"2014-12-03T16:58:54","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T00:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2014-12-03T16:59:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T00:59:01","slug":"challenging-oneself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/03\/challenging-oneself\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenging oneself"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last post<\/a>, I talked about instigating unhappiness as a way to spur change at organizations. I’ve also been thinking about it in a personal context of challenging myself, and when I should be satisfied and happy with where I am vs. stretching myself for the next goal.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons for the introspection is that I am thinking of signing up for the Death Ride<\/a> next year. The Death Ride, for those that don’t know, is a bike ride that is 130 miles, and climbs 15,000 vertical feet through 5 mountain passes in Tahoe. When I first heard about it 13 years ago, I thought it was completely insane – I had a couple coworkers who did it every year, but it was inconceivable to me, as I had never ridden more than 40 flat miles at that point. But here I am, thinking about signing up, and believing I can do it. So what changed?<\/p>\n

Well, this year has been a year of leveling up in bicycling. I started the year in April with an Old La Honda ride with some other Googlers (40 miles – one hill: Strava<\/a>), where I went all out and was still left in the dust, and bonked so hard that I was late to work. But I trained hard for the rest of the spring, and got in shape for my week-long mountain bike tour from Durango to Moab in July<\/a>. I had already decided to cap the summer off by doing my first century bike ride (100 miles), but my friend said that I would be in such good shape after the tour that I should do the climbing century (8000 feet of climbing) up and over Mt. Tam in August. So I did (Strava<\/a>) and it was actually pretty easy. So I signed up for Levi’s Gran Fondo<\/a> in October, and went all out in that (averaging 20 mph for the first 30 flat miles) and still felt good (Strava<\/a>). <\/p>\n

So I figured if I can do 100 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing in 8 hours (including breaks), I should be able to do 130 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing in 12 hours, right? Right? Okay, it’s a stretch, but it seems like a good goal to aim for next July. <\/p>\n

And this is where I wonder about myself. There are many who would be impressed and satisfied with where I got this year, from struggling to ride 40 miles, to being able to ride a climbing century. And I’m happy with that progress, but my first thought is “If I can do that, what else can I do?” and immediately move onto the next challenge rather than taking time to savor what I’ve accomplished. <\/p>\n

I see this tendency among many of my friends as well – we end up continuing to push the limits of what we can do when we could easily rest satisfied with what we’ve accomplished. In the Steven Kotler book on extreme athletes<\/a>, he describes communities as social triggers that help push us to try things beyond what we might on our own, so it is perhaps not surprising that my MIT friends tend to share this limit-pushing tendency and that such a community helps normalize such behavior. <\/p>\n

What I find interesting about this is that I change which communities I associate myself with as I get better at an activity. The first time I did the SF to Google 40 mile flat ride in 2012 was the longest I had ever ridden to that point in my life, and I was really proud of myself. Now I’ve done that ride on a fixie, and am using people who do double centuries as a comparison point. Or in volleyball, I used to be content just being able to keep the ball in play at doubles, but after playing a bunch this past year, I compare myself to the A-level players, who can consistently put points away and regularly get incredible digs. I keep moving the goalposts on myself so I’m never satisfied.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder if I’d be happier if I let myself be content and happy with what I’ve accomplished, rather than continually striving for more. I do enjoy the continued challenges and the fact that I can do so much more than I thought was possible even last year. And in other areas, I don’t challenge myself as much – I’ve gotten better at being content at work over the years, rather than beating myself up about why I haven’t accomplished more. Chorus<\/a> is another example where I hit my limits, felt I had done all I could, and accepted that. So maybe it’s just in areas where I feel I still have considerable upside that I keep challenging myself? <\/p>\n

Another aspect is that it is only possible to have a couple challenge areas at a time. If I wasn’t secure in my job with a comfortable income, I wouldn’t be able to challenge myself in other areas, as I would be too focused on basic needs. But because I’m in a good situation, I can afford to focus on other challenges such as sports (biking, skiing, volleyball) and socializing (especially in 2013<\/a>). I’m fortunate to have that freedom to take on those challenges. <\/p>\n

As the year winds down, I’ll be thinking ahead to next year and deciding where my next challenges lie – if I do sign up for the Death Ride, biking will definitely be one :). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post, I talked about instigating unhappiness as a way to spur change at organizations. I’ve also been thinking about it in a personal context of challenging myself, and when I should be satisfied and happy with where I am vs. stretching myself for the next goal. One of the reasons for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}