The Rider In Front Of You

Some of your work gets assigned to you. Some of it nobody asked for. You need both to grow, and you mostly need them at the exact moments they frustrate you.

I learned this at Blackhawk Farms, where a few times a summer I pay good money to ride my motorcycle in circles and, occasionally (okay…frequently…), to be annoyed.

Last time out I spent a string of laps behind a rider who kept botching Turn 5. He turned in too early, every lap, pinching himself tight against the inside of the corner like a man hugging a doorframe during an earthquake. My pace dropped to his pace. My first reaction was combustion.

But a track day is not a race, and you can’t pass everywhere, so I did the only useful thing available. I studied him. If early and tight was wrong, then late and wide might be right. Next lap I pushed my entry out, stayed patient, went wide, and held the throttle harder and longer than I ever had through that corner. It opened up like a door I’d been shouldering for a year.

Then the traffic cleared. With nobody’s taillight in front of me, I could run Turn 5 at the edge of what I’d just learned, lap after lap, pushing the line and my throttle a little further each time.

That’s the whole system. The rider in front of you teaches you the corner. The empty track is where you find out whether you learned it. Remove either one and the learning stops. All traffic and you never test your limit. All open track and you’re just repeating your own habits at higher speed.

The bar taught me this before the track did. When I jump behind the bar with my teammates at Garth’s Brew Bar, I’m in traffic, and it’s wonderful. Feedback comes at me from every direction, how they pour, what they say, what they notice that I miss. But when I get the bar to myself, I push. I try to surprise a guest past what they walked in expecting. I ask them, right there while the foam is still settling, what would have made the visit better. In the moment, as often as I can. That’s my open track.

Same at work. Assigned marketing tasks are traffic. The deliverables, the foundational voice of customer grind, the things you just need to do and ship. So be it. That work runs slower than your ego wants, and it teaches you the corners of the company. My unasked work right now is a readout nobody requested: what’s working, what needs improvement, and how we might prioritize efforts that span departments. It only exists because of what I noticed while grinding through the assigned laps. Traffic wrote the notes. The open track is where I get to ride them.

So here’s an audit, one friend to another: find the tension in your week.

If you’re stuck behind something slow and it’s making you a little crazy, good. Study the line while you’re back there. If you’re building something nobody asked for and your throttle hand is a little nervous, also good. That’s the stretch. But if nothing frustrated you and nothing scared you even slightly, you’re not in traffic and you’re not on the open track. You’re in the paddock. And the paddock teaches you nothing except how to stand around.

Stay Positive & It’s Not Just The Blend That’s Important; It’s The Tension Of Both