The joy of climbing and the fear of falling: How becoming a climber made me better at my job
By: Mark Ridley
Tags: Business, Climbing, Training, Life Lessons, Work

Five years ago I discovered rock climbing. To be precise, I discovered ‘indoor climbing’ with a group of work colleagues. It was one of those team building events where we were taken to do challenging things in the hope that we would become a ‘high performance team’.

Whether we became ‘high performance’ is still questionable, but I fell in love with climbing immediately. As a kid growing up in the Sussex countryside I was rarely not climbing something — trees, hay bales, grain stacks, combine harvesters — but never rocks. While the Sussex coast has it’s share of rock, it’s primarily chalk; a rock that spends most of its time sloughing insouciantly into the sea; a murderous trait which doesn’t lend itself to relaxed climbing.

Our company day out took us to The Foundry in Sheffield, one of the UK’s oldest indoor climbing walls. While the experience of the actual climbing was memorable, my white-hot recollection wasn’t my own attempts to scale a wall but rather the other people enjoying the facilities.

Next to our group of mostly male, mostly middle-aged, desk-bound executives were a pair of older climbers. Watching them, I guessed that they were a husband and wife couple and placed them in their mid-seventies. As our group grunted and strained at the easiest climbs on the wall, this couple took turns to float, serenely and without seeming effort, up the routes next to us. The grace and effortlessness of their technique wall was compelling to watch.

One other thing stood out. When you climb indoors with a rope, the most common approach is for one person to climb and another to ‘belay’ — providing the protection which makes falling safe and easy. Our group was learning to climb and belay simultaneously, and it was belaying which was the more nerve-wracking; feeling the responsibility for protecting the life of your climbing partner in the event that they fell from the wall. The older couple next to us were completely dependent and responsible for each other, a deep connection that necessarily transcends minor squabbles and frustrations.

Leaving the wall, I didn’t just want to climb; I wanted to honour the inspiration of that nameless couple. That evening, after the long drive home from Sheffield, I began my insistent sales pitch to my wife…

Five years later, I’m an enthusiastic but resolutely intermediate climber, and I’m okay with that. As luck would have it, I’m better at my day job than I am at climbing.

My unrealistic ambitions of hard grades put aside, I use climbing as both exercise and therapy; an opportunity to shut off my conscious mind’s hyperactive, always-on chatter. The act of climbing, unlike running, cycling or swimming, is the only time that I find everything non-essential fades away. No phones, no email, no distractions, just the tunnel-visioned focus that climbing hard demands. This peace, a kernel of meditative calm among the fear and effort of the actual activity, is why I love climbing.

Despite the significant improvement that climbing can offer to overall fitness, it’s the less obvious benefits that I want to focus on. It often surprises non-climbers and beginners when I explain that climbing isn’t really about physicality (at least, not until the hard grades). Just as important to being a ‘complete’ climber are the technical and mental aspects of the sport.

Over the last few years, this seemingly physical activity has taught me pervasive and powerful lessons about myself, and my approach to work, that directly translate to me being better at my job.

For those interested in real climbing advice, this guide was inspired by an article written by Neil Gresham which you can read here.

So, here goes — the biggest things that climbing has taught me about going to work:

Easy is best

Acquiring new skills at work invariably means learning something new. In my role this is typically a new technology, but is equally apparent if you’re changing jobs or companies. Unfamiliar processes and new surroundings can be challenging, and progress can feel uncomfortably slow and stunted.

“Beginners should emphasize easy climbing in the early stages, as it is impossible to learn new skills when the difficulty is too high” — Neil Gresham

For beginner climbers, there’s a similar challenge. We want to try hard and ‘push the grade’, seeking routes that are harder than those we’ve climbed before. Trying to rush to harder grades can, counter-intuitively, hold us back as we remove the opportunity to hone our technique on more measured challenges. Climbing relatively simple routes is an opportunity for us to focus on our technique without the mental and physical stress of exertion.

At work we should aim to make good technique habitual when things aren’t frenzied. One example I can offer from experience is preparing for managing ‘incidents’ (in tech speak, this is when your website stops working, or the CEO’s email is hacked); having a well drilled response to exceptional issues is the best way to maintain calm and execute efficiently.

We need to drill our techniques until they’re second nature while things are under control, and let the accumulated muscle memory take the strain when they go to hell.

Technique first, speed later

Invariably I work with companies who want to go faster; the business equivalent of climbing hard routes. More people, more features, more customers, more revenue, as fast as possible.

For nearly every one of these companies, the last thing on their mind is perfecting their technique. The belief is that worrying about process will make you slower, more bureaucratic, less dynamic.

“Style and efficiency are intrinsically related. It’s all about what goes on in your head while you climb, so on your warm-up climbs, focus on placing your feet quietly, accurately, and without re-adjustment. Breathe deeply, [and] try to move fluidly.” — Neil Gresham

Process improvement is something I’m passionate about. At work, the refinement of process makes us more efficient, more effective and capable of delivering more quickly with less resource. Technique is what inspired me to take up climbing in the first place. The couple, gliding up the wall next to our group, demonstrated technique instead of strength.

I often hear the excuse that young businesses just need to focus on getting the work done, and that the processes can follow. Invariably, they don’t follow; by the time the company has stopped to think about putting in good recruitment process, or security controls, or staff perks, it’s too late.

The truth is that refining technique — the process of releasing product features, of honing the sales process, of onboarding new employees, even of getting your bills paid — will slow you down at first…. and then it will speed you up, repaying your initial investment with interest. Even if you feel like you can power through it, don’t.

Get the technique right first, or as Neil puts it, “Use skill before force”.

Learn from others

Climbers are unusually supportive as a tribe. I suspect that it lies in the rather unique demands of the sport; you’re alone on the wall, but usually climbing with other people. Climbing is a sport that mitigates high risks by default, putting safety ahead of any other concern, yet is still considered ‘extreme’. It’s rarely directly competitive, and climbers celebrate other people trying hard, regardless of the route they’re climbing.

Climbers are diverse; there is a diaspora at every climbing wall, with encouragement shouted in many languages and accents. The gender split is even, with men and women climbing equivalently well up to the highest levels, while the ages at an indoor wall will regularly range from seven to seventy.

This generally inclusive, supportive, diverse environment makes for a fertile ground for improvement. Climbing improvement does not happen in isolation, and taking feedback from others is the fastest way to improve your ability. This can be as simple as watching other people attempt the same climb that you’re working on, sitting together to plan a route, or debriefing after a climb at the pub.

While the value of feedback from peers is high, the benefit of professional coaching is even better. A coach is experienced in structuring and prioritising feedback and, from my own experience, capable of motivating you to perform significantly better than trying to improve on your own.

At work, we should look for these same opportunities for support. Encouraging feedback and discussing our challenges with our peer group is powerful, but seeking advice and coaching from a professional is better still. While our direct managers may sometimes be well placed to do this, it can be more effective to seek mentors and coaches outside our immediate organisation; either in specific technical disciplines, or in the wider context of our careers.

Analyze your mistakes

If working in a tech company could teach climbers anything, it should be our well-documented commitment to failure.

While it would be far-fetched to say that tech firms and startups invented ‘test and learn’ approaches, we definitely popularised them. Agile software development, Scrum, the Lean Startup; all approaches which encourage us to try, probably fail, and then analyse what happened.

Climbing is a sport defined by iterative failure which, hopefully, culminates in hard-won success; if you succeed in climbing every route you attempt you’re not trying hard enough. When we climb a difficult section of a route, it’s extremely useful to review our performance; either taking feedback from a climbing partner or, even better, to watch a video of how we performed. We can then attempt to internalise the feedback, plan our improvements and apply them on the next attempt.

Although I suggested that climbers should be able to learn from tech businesses, it’s rare that I find a culture that is truly committed to this type of disciplined improvement. However, we have the tools available already — retrospectives, reviews, planning sessions. Ask yourself whether you, or your organisation, is really making enough of an effort to analyse and improve on past performance.

Balance variety and intensity

Climbing has a variety of high level challenges; in fitness, attitude and technique. At a more detailed level, even climbs of the same grade can vary significantly in the detail and the approach required to succeed.

Outdoors, on real rock, this difference is more pronounced than indoors, on plastic holds. Non-climbers and beginners are often bewildered by experienced climbers fixating on their foot placements rather than finger strength. Getting fit for climbing is not as simple as busting out a huge set of pull-ups. Instead, the best climbers don’t focus on just one particular exercise or style to improve, but rather maximise their exposure to as many different styles as possible.

“It’s easy to get trapped into only practicing the things you’re good at. Work your weaknesses” — Neil Gresham

It’s easy to fall into this trap as a climber. We begin to develop a style of climbing that suits our unique talents; maybe powerful and dynamic, or precise and technical. As our competence in that one style increases, the risk is that we unintentionally start to favour it at the expense of our weaknesses. Over time our training sessions start to eschew the areas that we’re weaker at because, psychologically, they don’t show us performing at our best.

This is something that I’ve experienced in my climbing practice, but also just as keenly at work. As we progress in our careers we lose our ‘beginner’s mind’, and start to grow attached to our reputation of competence. We, more than those around us, start to believe that we always need to display mastery and so restrict the activities that we try our hand at. There’s an unwillingness to demonstrate any incompetence that grows with rank. But that sting? That’s just pride.

The night of the fight, you might feel a sting.

This is an unfortunate and preventable problem. Wherever possible you should seek opportunities to broaden the diversity of your experiences at work, and practice the habit of exposing yourself to failure and the potential for appearing embarrassingly incompetent. As long as this is carried out with control and forethought, the opportunities for personal growth far outweigh the reputational risk.

However, this doesn’t mean giving up your expertise and focusing on being awful at your job. Dave McCleod, an elite climbing coach, suggests a 3:1 ratio in our climbing practice; identifying a weakness in our technique and working on that weakness with three times more intensity than those you are already an expert in. To defend this, McCleod points out that it generally requires much less effort to maintain a capability than to improve it.

In my own experience, adding bouldering (a type of short, powerful climbing) to my climbing styles saw the greatest improvements of my ability in a short period. Trying outdoor and ‘trad’ climbing, an even more specialised style that requires that you carry and place your own protection, opened my eyes to an entirely new world of possibility, while offering an experience that is uniquely close to nature.

In my career, this has been a powerful lesson — I’ve turned away permanent roles in favour of a ‘portfolio’ career, with the expressed intention to learn as much as I possibly can in the shortest period of time. Immersing myself in different companies and entirely new sectors has had the same effect on my professional life as adding new climbing styles has to my climbing training.

Just turning up isn’t good enough

If you want to become a professional climber, get ready to put the hours in. Even for those of us content to be adequate amateurs, it’s difficult to improve beyond a certain level as a climber if you can only manage to climb 2–3 times a week.

“Don’t expect to be a good climber if you are not prepared to put the time in” — Neil Gresham

Turning up and watching other people climb for two hours won’t boost your grade. Making the most of every opportunity to practice is critical; and that practice needs to be mindful and disciplined. The challenge is not to simply accumulate hours, but to ensure that training is effective and focused.

A case study in the discipline and focus required to climb at world class levels

Having a goal in mind and developing an effective training plan are important tools for improvement, both in climbing and at work. Instead of ‘putting the hours in’ and ‘trying hard’, it is a valuable skill to be able to determine whether the things that you spend your time doing are effective and lead to your long term success, whether that’s as an individual or as a team.

Again, this is an area where business is well placed to help athletes. Earlier this year, having spent some time with a large company to implement their ‘Objectives and Key Results’ (or OKRs), I turned my attention to my own, personal OKRs. Surprisingly, the application of this goal setting process to my non-work goals was surprisingly effective. The nature of OKRs to set ‘stretchy’ goals which form the basis for analysis and improvement makes them well suited to improvements in a sport like climbing.

Learn how to to rest

You hear a lot of macho bullshit about how success at work is measured by the hour. The legendary executives delivering 120 hour work weeks on four hours of sleep are martyrs at the altar of capitalist nonsense.

Not only is the myth unhelpful, but it’s also demonstrably bad for the business and the individual. Even if we optimistically assume that these people are filling their days with valuable work, their capacity would be severely restricted by lack of sleep.

Even excusing these highly driven individuals from their exceptional regimes, we see other dysfunctions in the normal work population. The very obvious example are colleagues who turn up for their first meeting on time, spend all day completing Cambridge Analytica surveys and then heading for the door as soon as the clock strikes tea-time.

Less obvious is the impact of those who feel culturally pressured to deliver for long periods at maximum capacity. These are those people who you leave at the office in the evening, heads deep in spreadsheets, only to find them still at their desks on Monday morning.

There’s no question that sometimes we have a ‘crunch’ project. Whether it’s a new product release, a TV advertising campaign, or a new client to support, sometimes we just have to make sacrifices to deliver. But, by having teams or individuals driven to maximum performance for any length of time, our organisational ability to respond to periods of escalated demand is diminished.

Simply put; if you’re always at 100%, you have nothing left for the hard stuff.

In climbing, we have a name for the hard stuff; ‘the crux’. The crux move is the hardest move on the wall; the sine qua non of the route, on which you’re definitely going to fall.

While it’s important to work large rests into your training regime, just as you should be ensuring you take vacations from work, there’s another climbing trick that I’d like to introduce you to: active rests.

When you climb a wall as a beginner, everything feels difficult. Every move is strenuous until the top. Your arms burn with the intensity of suns, until you get back on the ground.

As climbers develop, so does their ability to ‘read the route’, to determine the hard moves in advance, and critically, to identify rests.

Watching a great climber will appear almost balletic. While the overall speed is fast, the speed of individual moves can appear graceful and precise. If you watch the very best climbers, you’ll notice that they take great care to find rest positions, and even take rests where there are none.

To demonstrate this, have a quick look at this video of Jain Kim, a top South Korean climber (from 1h 52m).

Jain Kim is undoubtedly at the top of her game, and the entire sport of climbing, in this video. But if you do take a moment to watch this video, notice that every time she drops an arm down below her, or reaches into the chalk bag on her back, she is, effectively taking an active rest.

“In climbing Biographie, Margo spent nearly twice as much time resting as she did climbing!” — Eric Horst

Margo Hayes, a US climber, recently climbed one of the hardest climbs in the world, Biographie (5.15a/9a+/very very hard indeed). Eric Horst, a top US coach analysed her ascent and found that while the entire climb took around 16 minutes, just less than 6 minutes were actually spent climbing. Margo recruited every tool at her disposal to climb with optimal technique and speed. Resting is crucial to this.

At work, the analogy by now should be obvious: it’s not how many hours at work you spend, but how you spend them while you’re there.

Don’t be an 11pm emailer, showing your dedication through sheer volume of hours. Don’t burn yourself out by attempting to take on all the responsibility for keeping the ship afloat at nights and weekends. Don’t just turn up for your allotted eight hours and claim a pay cheque.

Instead, be focused on delivering your best from the smallest responsible amount of time. Focus yourself in single-minded bursts of activity, avoiding pointless meetings and resource-sapping multitasking. Plan your day to make the most effective use of time, using your mental energy when it’s most needed and on the most valuable tasks.

I have learned to use a few of these active resting tricks at work; I like to arrive at work early, but twice a week I make sure that I leave early to enjoy the evening. I grab a few minutes in silent meditation once or twice a day, especially on days packed with chaos and energy. I make sure that meetings aren’t relentlessly structured back to back, allowing thoughtful, ‘heads down’ work to fall into chunks where I can commit 2–3 hours at a time.

Whatever tricks you use to take active tests at work; rest when can, and save yourself for the crux.

The best climber is the one having the most fun.

Alex Lowe was a climber before my time. One of the greatest alpinists of his generation, he died in an avalanche in Tibet in 1999.

Alex is responsible for the quote that I find most meaningful in climbing; “The best climber is the one having the most fun”.

If I can implore you to take anything from this article, it is this. We spend the vast majority of our lives at work. Just as climbing brings us closer to our humanity and teaches us about ourselves, work should be the single greatest endeavour of our lives.

Before becoming a climber I would occasionally go for a run, and perhaps visit the gym. I ate poorly and wasn’t in great shape. I had little desire or need to change.

Since becoming a climber, going to the gym is an opportunity to train to go climbing. Eating healthily has a purpose that directly improves my ability to climb better. Embracing yoga, an activity I’d long held ridiculous male suspicions of, improves my flexibility for climbing. Having a passion for climbing has brought these other activities a sense of greater purpose.

In the same way, you can bring this focus to your work and career. Try to understand the work that you want to be still doing when you’re 70, and how you can do it with grace and efficiency.

Never forget why you climb. Never forget why you go to work.