Staying in the power zone

The ocean carries a tremendous amount of energy that travels hundreds or even thousands of miles and can offer you a great ride and a lot of fun while surfing if you only use it in the right way. Of course, the first thing is to be in the right moment at the right time, but once you are up on the wave, it is not yet over. Therefore, choosing the right line is crucial for efficiently surfing and making a great ride.

The wave, while breaking, is forming something we call a pocket. It is a place where the white water meets the open green face, offering the most energy to those riding it. It can travel faster or slower depending on the type of wave, and reading its speed is the key to choosing the right line. Because it is steep, it can help us generate speed that we can use later for maneuvers or a longer ride. Sometimes it rushes, so we need to run away from it, not to get smashed or not to get stuck in the whitewash, but sometimes it needs to be chased by cutbacks, so we do not go too far to the flat. For a very long time, I thought the more speed on the surfboard, the better. Still, through everyday practice and analysis of my surfing, with the help of some great tutorials, I concluded that it is not about maximising speed but about controlling it.

Often, after catching a long-awaited wave, because we don’t want to lose it, we rush quickly to the shoulder, ignoring the power the wave is offering. Fear of nosediving makes us paddle to the side, choosing the line that is sometimes parallel to the shore. As a result, we use only the middle part of the wave going up and down, struggling not to get caught by the whitewash. It is natural to think that we will have a long way to travel if we go down the wave. The thing is, surfing the green face of the wave is all about gravity. We generate speed by going down the hill and later pumping up. Unless there is a barrel, when you look at somebody ripping the wave, they often point the board’s nose to the shore. Going down, bottom-turning, then climbing up, this sequence repeats and helps to stay in the right place using the full power that the ocean carries and offers. The important thing is to read what we have in front of us and use it to our advantage instead of fighting against it. The swell offers us something, and this is all we can have at this point. It is only a matter of using it well.

So staying in the power zone instead of rushing to the shoulder is an essential part of surfing. As usual, this concept applies well beyond riding the waves. When we encounter a problem, we often seek the shortest path to our desired goal, overlooking the natural source that provides us with momentum. To recognise our potential, we must understand our environment and identify what can help us ride faster and further by the end of the day. By staying in our comfort zone, we risk missing the chance to have a life-changing experience.

It is straightforward for me to find an example from my coding life. When there is a feature to build, we can tackle it in many different ways. One approach is to go with the flow and hack it until it works, requiring little effort to make the code reusable and testable. Then, if someone needs you to implement automated tests, you write whatever is possible within the current architecture, ship it, and then return to the lineup to tackle another wave of complexity, waiting for bugs to emerge. A short ride produces the outcome, but you are far from optimally using the opportunity. Another approach would be to identify the areas of high complexity, break them down into smaller, manageable pieces, and deliver them in smaller chunks. It would give you time to look back and see where you can improve your architecture, what components are worth pulling out, what the designer was thinking, and maybe even involve him early on to get feedback sooner. It is much more stylish to go a bit slower, which can help you ride much longer. Of course, it doesn’t mean you can avoid all the bugs. Still, it will be easier to go back to the code written in a more modular, composable way with architecture in mind rather than a big ball of mud with a mutable state floating everywhere. Unless you will never have to look into the code again, getting it out of the way as quickly as possible might be a better option.

In conclusion, with more experience in both surfing and programming, I see that it is not only about delivering quickly but riding the waves of complexity with style. I prefer to aim for more satisfying and longer-lasting goals rather than immediate gratification.