David recognizes more than a few parallels between his passion for motorcycle racing and the work being done in creative and marketing agencies.

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“What I Learned from the Race Track” by David C. Baker for punctuation.com

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, I guess we're taking a week off of 2Bobs, and instead of talking about business issues, we're going to talk about one of your hobbies. Is that correct?

David C. Baker: Yes. It's about time, too. I'm so tired of this business nonsense.

Blair Enns: Which one do you want to talk about?

David C. Baker: Do you want to talk about photography? Do you want to talk about flying, long-distance shooting, sniper, woodworking?

Blair Enns: Let's talk about motorcycle racing. Your post is titled, "What I Learned From Teaching Motorcycle Racing." How do I say this? I was open to the topic when I started reading it, and then I quickly fell hard for it. I think this is a great idea. We've been talking about metaphors a little bit. It's a great learning this from that. I was shocked at how much material you were able to plumb from this topic.

David C. Baker: All the stuff I made up. I outdid myself, yes.

Blair Enns: You did, yes. What was the impetus for this? You've been writing recently?

David C. Baker: Not anymore. I actually started this article about three years ago, and I'm getting ready to go on a big motorcycle trip with a bunch of friends up in Wisconsin at the Driftless Area, it's called. I finished another track day and I thought, "Okay, I want to write this. I've got some really good pictures. Only people who are interested in writing will care about the pictures, but I've got some good pictures. I think I'll just finish this article." Then I started writing out in my little outliner thing. I use Workflowy. Everybody else uses Notion, I think. I use Workflowy. As thoughts came to me, like, "What are the parallels here?" I was surprised at how many of them there were and it was just fun.

Blair Enns: You don't just write, but you teach as well. It's another thing, when you understand something well enough to teach it, then obviously you're breaking it down into the component parts, and you can see the comparisons between how you're getting other people to think about writing and how you're getting other people to think about their business.

David C. Baker: Yes. Not to take too much credit for this, I was a good teacher because a teacher taught me how to teach. I really just borrowed this from the Superbike School where I was one of their paid teachers, fly around the world and teach at racetracks. There's some other smaller points in here, too. I started the article by talking about why we choose certain hobbies. There's somebody in our family that puts big jigsaw puzzles together. I'm always curious more about what is it about that hobby that really interests you.

The hobbies that I tend to choose, they require a certain level of mastery and they require a certain level of danger to force me to not think about work. This is a personal weakness. If it's a relaxing hobby, I'm probably going to be thinking about work. I tend to gravitate towards ones that force work out, sadly.

Blair Enns: It's funny, I just came from a long swim and I go to the beach and it's beautiful weather, I get in the water and not think about work. When I get into a long swim, when I'm in the groove, I find I start thinking about work. I remember just a few minutes ago being in the middle of this wonderful groove and my mind's drifting to work. Literally drifting to work. Not enough danger in my hobby. You rode bikes at a very young age, right?

David C. Baker: Yes. I grew up in a very remote part of Guatemala where there weren't many roads. Motorcycles and horses were how we got around, and my parents would order a course for me every year from Calvert School and then later the University of Nebraska Extension. I would just guide myself through this. My parents didn't help. I could finish my schoolwork instead of a whole year, or nine months at a typical school, you'd finish it in two or three months, and then you had the rest of the year just to have fun. I would spend the rest of that time just riding around the country.

They were a big part of my life. Then I dropped them when our kids were young. By "dropped them", I don't mean I dropped the motorcycle, I mean I dropped the hobby. Then, later, I don't remember at what age, I thought, "Oh, I really miss this." I just went and bought one. Then just rode hundreds of thousands of miles to most states and owned a large motorcycle discussion board, the largest BMW one in the world for five years. I don't anymore. Made all kinds of friends, and then started teaching, and just it's been a part of my life. I just love it.

Blair Enns: You've got 11 lessons from high-performance riding. Where do you want to start?

David C. Baker: Yes, we don't necessarily have to go through all these. If people are interested in detail, they can find the article at punctuation.com. Some of these are really fascinating. The first one is that your vision controls everything. When you are first teaching a student, you know what they're going to do by watching where their helmet is pointed. You're riding behind them, watching them. If somebody goes wide, it's because they were looking at the wrong spot. If they start to get all shaky, it's because they're not looking far enough ahead.

The whole point is that-- I'm trying to draw parallels here. This parallel is you've got to focus on the right things. This is the second one to scanning without target fixation. When you're nervous about something on a racetrack or on a public road, and you stare at it, then bad things happen because you lose the bigger picture in things. Instead, you need to acknowledge this obstacle or this danger, and then look to where you want to go because your body follows wherever your vision is.

I couldn't help thinking of AI right now. People are just locked on the dangers of AI, and they're not keeping it in context. It's like, "People, AI is a wonderful tool. This is not going to destroy your world." It's that's target fixation. I guess that's two things out of the 11. Vision controls everything and scan without target fixation.

Blair Enns: Yes, I don't ride motorcycles, but I see the parallel in downhill mountain biking, and you see people who are pretty new at it. They're looking at the obstacle that's very, very close to them when they should be looking past it to the rest of the trail and just glide over the obstacle. The AI parallel, that's fascinating to me because everybody is pretty fixated on it, but it's like it's there. It's on the track, to keep the metaphor. You need to be aware of it, but if you're completely fixed on it, you're probably headed for a crash.

David C. Baker: Yes, exactly. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just pop over to LinkedIn. It's like a fourth of all the posts in my feed anyway seem to be about AI, and most of them are overreacting, one way or the other, at least in my estimation, I don't necessarily know what overreacting is because I'm learning too, but it's like, "People, let's not be lemmings. It's AI now. What are we going to be just locked onto next year?" Maybe it'll be some different Google algorithm or something. It's like, "Okay, just acknowledge the threat and then take your eyes off it and think about it carefully and don't overreact."

Blair Enns: Your vision controls everything is the first lesson, and scanning without target fixation, which is be aware of everything, but don't fixate on a particular danger. Is that right?

David C. Baker: Right. Yes. This third one may be my favorite. The notion is to slow down to speed up. If you really want to make time on a racetrack, you have to drive really hard out of an exit. To do that, you have to enter that turn at a very controlled speed. You can't be bouncing all over the place, and at the edge of traction control. You have to be really entering that curve at a slow enough pace so that you can get turned and then get upright and then exit with all the power you have. I love this metaphor because it tells me that uncontrolled growth, which is what a new student does, they just fly into a corner and they try to control the bike, and then they're bouncing all over on the thing while an expert rider is just shooting past them out of the corner.

Taking things really, really fast is not always the fastest way to get there. Sometimes it's better just to slow down, plan it carefully, and then execute it perfectly. We're not really good at that. We tend to get these opportunities that are handed to us. We don't know how to control them. They just come to us, and we feel like we have to latch onto them and fly into this corner and take advantage of it instead of slowing down, planning, being strategic, and then accelerating, driving out of that corner. It's just such an amazing feeling.

Blair Enns: Incomplete control.

David C. Baker: Yes. Incomplete control. I was teaching, I was sponsored by Kawasaki when I was doing it, and I was