I am a regular weekend biker. I have no intention to participate in any race / do competitive biking. Nevertheless, I had set myself a few targets when I started doing this a couple of years ago:
- Bike for 62 miles (100 km) in a single riding session
- Reach a total elevation of 2500 ft during a single session
- Hit 30 mph (48 Kmph) during a single session
While I was not "tracking" these goals, I would examine the analysis after each ride (on the Strava app). A few weeks back, I noticed that I came very close to meeting the third goal (on speed) - my Max speed was 29.7 mph
I was at the Spring Mixer event conducted by ATEA (at FalconX, Milpitas) yesterday. The event included a panel on "Entrepreneurship Success" moderated by serial entrepreneur,
Subbu Meiyappan. One of the panelists,
Kirthika Padmanabhan works for X, the Moonshot factory (a division of Alphabet). She talked about the secrets of taking moonshots. The first one is to "Tackle the Monkey first". That is, for a task of placing a monkey, that can recite Shakespeare, on a pedestal; one should tackle the monkey first. Don't spend your efforts to build the pedestal.
Now, this was not the first time I had heard this. We have all seen the famous Steven Covey "Big Rock"
video. Somehow, the image of the monkey was stuck in my head when I set out for my bike ride earlier this morning. I looked at the analysis of the earlier ride again. I noticed that I hit the speed of 29.7 mph towards the end of my ride - when I was more fatigued. So, I decided to "tackle the monkey first" and do that section of the ride first - when my legs were more fresh.
I hit my target of 30 mph this time. Not only that, I was energized to tackle more slopes. As a result, I had many more 20+ mph segments.
I hope all of you are able to tackle the monkey first in your respective projects / missions / goals / efforts.
