Enlightenment@18000 ft: The Achievability Paradox
We were supposed to leave in two hours. A brand new saddle bag had been procured and so were the bike spares. Packing had been done. However, I was still not sure we were going.
Both I and wife tried to convince a couple other friends/couples to come along for the bike trip to Ladakh but everyone had some pressing concern or the other. So we were just two. Internet search gave details about rough terrain, no contact with civilization for at least a couple of days and breathing problems due to Acute Mountain Sickness. You even got to carry extra petrol because you don’t get petrol pumps.
Moreover, times had changed. I was no longer the regular gym enthusiast in my twenties. No longer super confident about my fitness level, I didn’t want to end up sprawled besides my Royal Enfield panting at 17000 feet with wife trying CPR on me and no help in sight for 20 kms either way. There was also, this safety aspect. What if we had a run-in with some ruffians in the middle of no-where? What if the bike broke down? What if……..what if.
The point is, I was not sure if we would be able to do pull it off, all alone. The “Achievability” of the target was pretty low.
We started out anyway.
We were told that just 40 kms of the 475 km from Manali to Leh was bad, all else was smooth sailing. On the road, we discovered it was much worse than that. Probably, less than 100 kms is “good road”, all else is such that you can’t move at higher than 15-20 km/hr.
We’d drive for 10-12 hours and only do 150 kms in a day. At several places, big streams of water flooded the road flowing perpendicular to it. Uneven depth below the water surface with varied sized rocks underneath and strong current towards the valley made it quite risky – if you are not careful, you can even be washed away by the current down thousands of feet. You’d fold up your pants, cross the stream, carefully steering the bike along and then change your socks because they would be all wet. We had some 5-6 pairs of socks and all were wet by the time we reached the last stream before Pang. So no option but to drive the last 20 kms (1 hour) to Pang in wet socks.
The cold was biting and it took sometime to adjust to the food on the way. Rocks, stones and gravel on the road with sharp twists and turns would make you jump and bump with a huge element of surprise, imagine having to do that for 12 hours at a stretch. At places, the road would be so dusty, you’d be covered in no less than half a kilo of road dust after just an hour of drive.
The road was worse than we imagined sitting in Delhi. The water streams were deeper and bigger, rocks – bigger and sharper, the journey more tiring than we apprehended.
However, I was much surer of myself when in the middle, we felt much safer, much more at ease than we had imagined, again, sitting in Delhi.
The point being, when you are about to start something, you make some estimate of the “Achievability” of the target and the “Level of Difficulty” in accomplishing it. Whether or not we set out to do something depends on our estimate of achievability more than difficulty.
However, once you start, a funny thing happens. You realize that a lot difficulties you imagined initially are there in a much more intense avatar and there are a couple unexpected ones thrown in for good measure. Thus, the actual level of difficulty (or, intensity of challenges) is usually much more than what you had imagined. However, even with bigger challenges, the target seems much more achievable than it did when you were about to start.
When you are in the middle of Leh-Manali, you are focussed only on the current hair-pin bend, or the water stream in front – energies are focussed on how to cross it not how fearful it is. Also, you have seen yourself maneouvre similar streams, bends, climbs in the past 50-100-150 kilometers, it kind of piles up. Moreover, being in the middle of action has its own adrenalin rush and enabling effect. All this contributes to the doubts about achievability melting away. This, despite challenges being bigger than expected.
The thesis here is that we usually tend to underestimate both the achievability and the level of difficulty when planning about a project.
The implication is that anything we can conceive of is much more achievable than we estimate. To be sure, the challenges we actually face might be more difficult than initially believed but it usually will all be worth it because of the increased adrenalin rush and the enabling effect, “I managed the last 50 kms so I will manage the next 50 too”.
The key is not getting bogged down by our low estimates of achievability.
