Lateral Thinking and Flow

Today, I want to talk about lateral thinking.

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About going sideways to solve a problem.

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Finding a new path and an unseen solution.

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Let’s start with a story and go back to 2011 when surfer Ian Walsh reinvited big wave surfing.

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The waves were colossal: fifty feet, maybe fifty-five.

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Nobody paddled this surf break on these monster days.

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Walsh’s goal was to take off as late as possible, letting the wave jack all the way up before popping to his feet.

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But when he finally popped, nothing happened.

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The wave was standing straight up, but Walsh was hung up on the ledge, perched above the chasm. "I was really late," he says.

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"When I jumped to my feet the wave already looked beyond vertical. The wind was ripping up the face with so much force that I had to grab the edge of my board with my right hand just to try to keep myself in it."

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Grabbing the edge did the trick.

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With his weight forward the nose dipped, and the board followed.

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He dropped straight down, a ferocious drop, full of free fall and bounce — down, down, down, board chattering, nose bobbing, max speed.

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At the last instant, Walsh stabilized and took control.

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He dove deep into his bottom turn, then a few quick cuts to get into position for the tube.

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The curtain closed.

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Walsh spent a few seconds inside the barrel, got spit out, and tossed from his board.

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By then, it didn’t matter — the ride was his.

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In those few moments, Walsh inverted a century of surf wisdom and did the impossible.

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He’d paddled into a wave entirely off-limits to paddlers.

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Paddling is now the way surfers catch big waves. Walsh shifted the paradigm.

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Instead of trying to muscle through, Walsh took an entirely different tack — he "lateralized."

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In technical terms, Walsh began looking outside his domain of expertise for help surmounting his problem.

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And certainly, lateralization isn’t the only way to shift paradigms, but on the flow path, it’s often the only way forward.

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Sooner or later, there’s always a mental hurdle we can’t clear, a decision too dangerous to attack head-on.

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In those situations, sideways is forward.

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Plus, these days, sideways are often the way life works.

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"Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder," wrote Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In, and she’s not wrong.

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Statistics vary, but today, the average person changes jobs seven times between the ages of eighteen and forty.

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Most importantly, there’s momentum on the flow path.

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Lateralization allows you to hold on to that thrust no matter the circumstances.

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Momentum over time — that’s the invisible kung fu. And that’s also what athletes mean by the term progression.

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Walsh had been surfing at Jaws surf break since he was a kid.

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There had been days, weeks, months, and years of 4 percent plus 4 percent plus 4 percent (the magic of the skill challenge ratio), of pushing himself into ten-foot, twenty-foot, thirty-foot surf, of continuously testing limits, lateralizing, of nearly dying, of driving past injury and fear, of honing skills, getting stronger, getting smarter — a self-taught, near graduate-level education in hydrodynamics, meteorology, body mechanics, and flow.

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Of course, most of us don’t think about these facts.

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We can’t see progression or feel the momentum. It’s invisible kung fu.

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Instead, when we see a surfer riding Jaws, the tableau is neurologically unfathomable.

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The brain’s pattern-recognition system is built to lump like with like, but when in most of our lives have, we put ourselves in the path of Godzilla.

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There are no grounds for comparison.

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So, we look at Jaws and feel fear, dread, and awe — because that’s what evolution designed us to feel.

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But that’s not what Ian Walsh felt. "Mostly," he says, "it felt like another day at the office."

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