From Surfing to Strategy
Our brains are amazing.
Flow & The Short Game
Ken said “go!” so I went.
It wasn’t a huge wave but it was thick and I was late.
I was surfing Sunset on the North Shore of Oahu with my friends Bob and Jeff.
The Ken that told me to go was Ken Bradshaw, big wave pioneer. My friend Jeff has a signed, framed, poster on his wall of Mr. Bradshaw riding a 85+ foot wave at Outside Log Cabins on the North Shore of Oahu in 1996.
The wave I took off on was a lot smaller than Mr. Bradshaw’s wave from the poster but the wave was still bigger than I was.
Surfing is an amazing sport. It’s a lot like snowboarding or skiing but the mass of energy you’re riding is moving and changing shape while you are riding it.
Jack London described surfing as a state of perpetual falling. If you get your path right, you’re falling at the same rate the water is rising up under you. That falling generates speed across the face of the wave.
To get my path right on that wave at Sunset a couple of things had to happen, I had to stand up and I had to turn.
Since I was late on my take off, I had less time to stand up and less time to turn.
Waves change from a bump to a wall to a cave when they reach the impact zone.
In surfing, the difference between an amazing ride and a brutal wipeout is largely dependent on where you are on the wave when it changes shape.
Even on smaller days the wave at Sunset rumbles and growls as it rolls across the reef, which means even on smaller days there are consequences to small mistakes.
When I went from lying on the board to standing on the board the wave had gone from bump to wall.
More out of instinct than any kind of conscious decision, I grabbed the outside rail of the board so I could put more pressure on the fins and more pressure on the inside rail.
I needed all the pressure I could get on the fins and inside rail to get the nose of the board pointed down the line before it buried itself in the bottom of the wave.
As the nose of the board came around, the lip of the wave threw out over my head.
The ride was amazing.
Effort & The Long Game
At the opposite end of the effort and enjoyment spectrum from surfing is the Joint Planning Process (JPP), formerly known as the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP).
Surfing has periods of ecstasy from effortless flow.
Military planning is not effortless and few people would describe it as enjoyable.
Surfing is a fast feedback loop where a ton of sensory information about a rapidly changing environment is quickly taken in and converted to action. Feedback is instantaneous and unmistakable. Amazing ride or wipeout.
Military planning can be agonizingly slow with little or no feedback. At least half of the time, military planning is dedicated to making sure something bad doesn’t happen in the distant future.
Our brains have an astounding ability to operate everywhere on this spectrum, from instantaneous decisions with instantaneous feedback to deeply conceptual decisions with agonizingly slow feedback loops.
From the here and now to the distant future. Our brains are amazing.
