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In what is becoming a weekly ritual, Carrie and I climbed Vancouver’s Grouse Mountain at just before 7 a.m. today. The cocktail of extreme physical exertion and being alone with my thoughts is addictive, and it’s at these times that I find the greatest clarity and inspiration.

So I thought I’d start a semi-regular series of blog posts following each of these hikes, as a way of sharing ideas and (I hope) continuing the momentum of inspiration.

Hard work without goals is wasted work

At some point we were all told that quality beats quantity any day of the week. So why are we so often obsessed with the time we spend doing things rather than the real value of the things themselves? Pounding up the very steep trail (they actually call it the Grouse Grind or “mother nature’s stairmaster“, just so you understand it’s really going to hurt) I’m sure that it felt worse than it ought to have done because I didn’t spend enough time thinking about what I wanted to get out of the experience. Instead it was all about the pain of the moment. Next time I’ll do two things: set a time goal and pace myself accordingly; and for every painful thought I’ll counterbalance it with mental affirmation of the mental, physical and spiritual good it’s doing.

Competition is good, competition is right

Sometimes it feels as though competition has a bad rap — as if it’s only a step away from Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” speech in Wall Street. But the right kind of competition — driven people working towards objectives that will make their lives or the lives of others better — is nothing but healthy. In business there isn’t a limitless pool of attention and customers so there’s no point pretending that, at some level, it isn’t about passing someone else on the way up.

But civility is also critically important. On the trail this morning there were lots of competitive hikers, many of whom obsessively watch their times and climb the trail several times a week in a quest to be faster. But even when it’s crowded on the narrowest stretches there’s no pushing and shoving. So I suppose what I take from this is that there’s no need to push others out of the way; competition is about being the best at something good and positive, not about impeding others. In fact the time you spend haranguing others is very likely diverting you from actually getting ahead.

Excuses help no-one, least of all you

Vancouver being the small town that it is we happened to meet our lawyer on the hill. Ian must be 15 years older than me but he blasted up the trail a good seven minutes faster than us. At the top I felt compelled to point out that I’d slipped out of my training regimen after a serious boating accident a couple of years ago. I used to be fast, and I’ve got an excuse for why I’m not now… Really, what an unnecessary thing to say. It did nothing but seek to diminish the achievement of the other person and provide me with an ongoing cop-out for not setting tough targets for the time I want to achieve.

It’s all about perspective. Far better to think to myself that my 15 year age advantage is more than enough to compensate for a two-year-old injury.

So, no rocket science or great wisdom there, but it’s just the beginning. Think of this first post as framing the more detailed thoughts I’ll share in the coming weeks and months.

PS: I’d really like to make a point of using my own photographs in these posts, but I didn’t pack the camera this morning. The photos here are courtesy of guidomax.