Muscles I Didn't Know I Had

So, I took a canoing trip with my wife and some friends last weekend.  Nothing crazy, just a 10 mile trip down a lazy river... which turned out to be an incredibly congested lazy river.

The plan for this trip was that we would lash our canoes together to form a flotilla.  This flotilla would be armed with a series of water cannons for the express purpose of laying siege to anyone who looked at us funny.  Normally, this might seem like an evil purpose, but know that it was nearly 100 degrees with high humidity.  So, in actuality, we were providing a vital public service.

Once we were putting the canoes into the river we quickly saw that we were not going to be alone on this trip.  It seems like everyone decided to canoe that day.  This required an alteration to our plan.  Originally we were going to go with a four canoe flotilla... instead, we went with three and a single destroyer boat to quickly move between the crowd.... my wife and I went for the destroyer role.

The trip was fun and rather uneventful for us.  It was amazing how many people managed to sink a canoe in three feet of water, but I digress.  Our plan of drenching people with gallons of water went well, and my wife an I had a blast paddling circles around people soaking them from all angles.  The remorse of the days events hit hard though. 

That night around 2AM I woke to an awful feeling.  Was it my conscience tormented by the drenching we gave to those poor river folk?  Nope, cramps and significant joint pain.  Seems my arms and shoulders weren't used to the rowing action.  Here I was thinking that my amazing typing skills had prepared me for this physical exertion; I was wrong.

After a few hours of stretching and hydrating I was able to get the pain to subside enough that I could go back to sleep, but it took a few days for the effects to wear off completely.  So, what can be learned here?

Interestingly enough, this is a lesson I've learned before.  The context was a little different, but the lesson was the same.  See,  I work for a company that services the SMB space with computer and networking needs.  I really grew up in this organization and learned quite a bit through working in hundreds of different networks, each with their own requirements and quirks.

My role stared in an entry level call center position and moved through basic field service work and eventually put me in the lead network infrastructure and security role.  It is in this role that I got comfortable.  It's not that I was lazy; I feel I have a pretty solid work ethic, and  I believe my boss would echo that sentiment.  The issue was that I stopped pushing myself.

A few years down the road, my organization branched out into a new arena for us, remote monitoring.  With that new product line came a new role.  This role would be a consulting role that would advise clients in the monitoring program.  It was new and exciting, so I jumped at the chance.  I dove in with all the enthusiasm of running a destroyer canoe around a battlefield drenching poor unsuspecting kayakers.  Not long into this new role though, I found that I was using new and heretofore unexercised muscles.  I quickly found that I needed time to ramp up... I might even, gulp, need help.  Fortunately, I have some fantastic co-workers and a consultant that assisted me in laying out the role more efficiently and devising a plan around communication responsibility.  That's not to say things are perfect, but the regiment is now defined.

Right around the time of this experience I listened to an episode of the GRM n00bs podcast (http://www.grmn00bs.com/2009/12/16/podcast-episode-9-when-they-were-n00bs-with-rob-fullermubix) where Rob "Mubix" Fuller (http://twitter.com/mubix)was interviewed.  In that interview he talked about a time when he was training for a physical evaluation.  He said he was never one of the fastest runners; though, there was nothing that physically kept him from excelling.  During that training, one of his senior officers noticed his comfort in completing within the deadline and told him that he should adopt a different view.  See the people he was running with were holding him back from how well he could do.  As long as he was willing to just be where he was, he would never find out how far he could go.  His new goal was to be to run past each of the people in front of him and as he passed he would tell them to run faster.  In essence, he needed to step up and lead so that all would become better, not just be happy with success.

I've since adopted this mentality in my work.  I'm not satisfied to get though the day successfully.  It's time to drive toward excellence, not just success.  Where will this lead me?  I honestly don't know, but I'm sure not willing to settle for simple success any longer.  It's time to stretch the muscles and discover new ones.  It's time to uncover the new arenas of knowledge and understanding that I lack.  Most of all, it's time to get the whole team running faster.

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PS:
Some of you may be asking yourself... does this mean that you're going to apply this to your physical fitness to?

Here's my answer.  Begrudgingly, yes.  I feel that there is no way that I can operate at my peak level professionally without my physical body matching.  So, in the spirit of accountability, I need your help.  Tweet me @charon79m with ideas on getting in shape with limited time.