In elementary school, I’d hand in my exam first. The kids around me would still be halfway through, and I’d already be at the teacher’s desk. I’d often leave questions blank or fill in random answers. My logic was clean. If I don’t know the answer, sitting there longer won’t change that, so I might as well turn it in. The discomfort of not knowing was worse than the consequences of a lower grade.

Over time, I translated it into adult versions.

When something at home breaks, I fix it as fast as I can. There were a few hikes where my missus asked why I had to catch and pass everyone in front of us. I called it competitiveness at the time. Each time I go for a run, I do it at 110% effort as that is how you get fitter, right? I’ve been watching YouTube at 1.5x for years. Before that, in the era of DVDs, I’d hold the right arrow during anything that felt slow.

For a long time, I called that “drive”, “focus”, or some kind of male alpha thing. It was easy to dress up because the surface metrics looked good. I overtook the hikers, beat time on the run, got through the films, and scored fine enough on the exam.

What I didn’t see was what I was actually running from.

The fix-it-fast pattern starts with a confident “I know how this works”. When the fix doesn’t hold, I don’t doubt I might be wrong, but I double down on the diagnosis. The problem must be more complicated than it looked, which is why my approach didn’t work. The alternative would be to admit I’d misread it. Often it turns out I just hadn’t looked properly the first time, but by then I’m already three layers deep into solving a complication I invented.

Overtaking on the hike has nothing to do with the other groups. They were just a target. Picking groups to pass gave me a justification to push harder, which was the only thing that ended the hike sooner. The 110% run is the same move without the cover story. “I just want it over” is masked in the “I'm really fit” charade. YouTube speed-up is confirming what I guessed the person would say, so I can leave.

I'm rushing because I'm avoiding sitting in not-knowing. I close the question early, before I’ve really looked at it. Then I can’t tolerate the gap between my pre-judgment and the confirmation. The gap is where I’d have to be someone who hadn’t already decided, and that’s incompatible with the self-image I’ve been maintaining since I was a kid.

The exam was the first place I found the workaround. Decide I don’t know, before I try. Then sitting there is just dead time. Turn it in. Bad grades were cheaper than the experience of being a person who hadn’t worked it out yet.

Once I saw it, the two settings became obvious too. Do it as fast as possible vs plan it so perfectly that I never actually start. When I try to do something properly, I disappear into the planning and the planning expands until the thing is supposed to be ideal, and ideal isn’t possible, so the project sits half-built in my head while I do five fast things instead. Both modes are the same move. Both protect me from the middle, where I’d actually have to try, and not know how it’ll go.

The thing I’m trying now is the road bike.

Rugby was the wrong sport to sit in the middle, as it rewards the impulse I’m trying to retrain. Get through the play. End the friction. Take the hit. The faster you process discomfort, the more useful you are. I’m not sorry I have it as a setting. I just don’t want it to be my only one.

The road bike is the opposite. Long, boring, no scoreline. Three hours where the only point is to keep pedaling at a comfortable pace. The whole shape of it is designed to deny me the exit I’ve been taking for decades.

The first few rides were unbearable. I kept checking the distance, kept calculating how long was left, kept performing the same fast-forward move on my own afternoon. It took a while before I stopped looking at the computer. It still feels like work not to look.

I don’t know if it’s working yet. The practice is the practice. I keep pedalling.

Every other discipline I’ve ever done has had a season or a tournament, and I think part of why pedaling works is that it requires me to sit with it for longer than I used to, without the ability to make it shorter.

I want to think there is a version where I sit on the bike for six months and come back changed, but I’m fully aware that isn’t real. The mechanism I’m trying to retrain is the exact mechanism that wants me to finish the retraining and move on. It would love a tidy ending.

So I keep pedalling. Long, boring, without resolution. And I try to notice the moment I reach for the right arrow on something I should let play at normal speed.

That’s the work.