What’s your “slowest hiker”?

Last week, I finished reading Greg McKeown’s persuasive book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

My good friend, neurodiversity mentor and innovation consultant Matthew Bellringer, highly recommended it to me. And I can see why it was such a big hit when it was published a decade ago.

As a recovering people-pleaser, I think it’s worth reading Chapter 11 alone (Dare: The Power of a Graceful “No”) for its great examples of how to say no to people in our lives. Indeed, the whole book has helpful ideas around boundaries, uncommitting to obligations, the perks of being unavailable, and prioritising sleep and play.

While each chapter’s useful (there’s now a 21-day challenge based on each chapter, which you can read at the end of the revised book’s preview), the phrase that’s remained with me is “the slowest hiker.”

In chapter 16, Subtract: Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles, McKeown draws on the business parable The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt.

The main character of the book, Alex, a production manager who is struggling to turn around a failing factory in three months, leads a group of boy scouts on a hike.

The boys all walk at different speeds, making it hard to keep the group together. One boy, Herbie, is the slowest of all.

Alex tries stopping the group to let Herbie catch up, and then puts Herbie at the front so they all keep his slow pace. But these solutions only delay the whole group even further.

Then he realises that if he can help Herbie be even just a little bit faster, the whole group will be faster.

By removing weight from Herbie’s backpack (the extra food and supplies he’s brought with him - he’s a kid after my own heart) and sharing the load amongst the group, everyone moves faster because Herbie moves faster.

And then, Alex realises that he has the same issue with the production plant.

Instead of trying to improve every aspect of the factory all at once, he needs to identify the part of the process that’s slower in relation to every other part.

By fixing the cause of the delays for the slowest process at a time, the whole system improves more rapidly than by starting with things that have little overall impact.

While this parable isn’t rocket science, it did make me wonder about what slows me down the most.

My answer isn’t an easy one for me to remedy. It’s low energy and constant physical pain and discomfort due to the disabling chronic illness I live with. Which can often result in a low mood, too.

However, I have been able to engage with my “slowest hiker” in gentle ways after reading this story.

I noticed once again that simply sitting causes fatigue and discomfort, making things like meditation difficult. But I discovered that sitting in bed on a pillow, with two behind my back and one on my lap for my arms, helped me sit for 50 minutes without causing much more additional pain.

I also dug out an old director’s chair, the kind with fabric slings, and discovered that it causes me less discomfort when I’m sitting and ideating on my next business idea.

And after a successful attempt last weekend, I’ve blocked out the next three Sunday mornings to digitally detox, meditate, and journal till noon, employing that four-pillow method to help me sit long enough to do so.

Will these changes make a huge difference in my life or in my ability to accomplish the things I hope to?

I don’t know. It’s still early days. Right now, sitting in my fancy (paid-for) ergonomic chair at my laptop, I can feel the pain and exhaustion in my lower back and legs, despite my seat’s valiant efforts.

But what I do appreciate is the reawakened awareness that I have agency and autonomy.

We humans are good at adapting to the pain and discomfort in our lives - the habituation effect. I’m used to feeling uncomfortable, and my attempts to remedy it seldom work.

Good choices become harder when we’re tired, so no wonder I end up reading things on my phone rather than picking up a good book, etc.

But by identifying it as something that’s holding me up across all of the things I want to do, the book gave me the presence of mind to have new ideas about how to become more comfortable.

To support myself better, both literally and metaphorically, so that the greatest impact might happen.

What might your slowest hiker be?

Photo by Nina Uhlikova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-standing-on-cliff-287240/