Thinking Backward
/I was taught to focus on what’s in front of me my entire life. From my parents, to my teachers, to my sports idols, and fascination with American military history. I leaned on quotes like:
“If we fail to adapt, we fail to move forward.” - John Wooden
“Set your goal, and keep moving forward.” - George St. Pierre
"Retreat, hell! We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction." - General Oliver P. Smith
The subtext of those lessons was the same: standing still is bad; going backward is worse. The purpose of adult life is to move forward, constantly reaching from one goal to the next. Endless advancing effort in all things. No wonder people complain about being “on a treadmill” or profess a desire to leave the “rat race” behind. We all grapple with feeling stuck while venturing forward, but I’ve discovered that backing up to a destination is a strategy worth exploring.
I’m still the new guy on my crew, which means all the menial tasks fall at my feet. I understand — I’m paying my dues, and the lineman and foreman on my crew have already organized trucks, dug holes, stapled pole grounds, and dumped trash. They want to know that I won’t shy from those tasks so I keep my hand raised. I’ve been challenged, but the central challenge of my seven months in the utility industry has been backing a utility truck attached to a materials trailer into a position where the lineman can do work.
Short trailers are awful to back. Minuscule wheel turns will quickly force that trailer into a jackknife. Counter-intuitively, for folks without CDLs, it is much easier to back a 53’ trailer than it is to back a 18’ trailer. My first time backing a trailer on the job was in a tightly-confined, semi-elevated cul-de-sac on a dirt road that was more mud than dirt. Anxious as all hell, I over-corrected and just couldn’t get the trailer to go right. My foreman dryly asked: “You do have your CDL, right?” I replied that I did, but all my practice and testing was done on conveniently straight asphalt.
After ten minutes of continuous failure, one of the lineman jumped in, pulled forward a bit and backed the trailer into its spot in one attempt. Then, as I’ve found is common in this work, I was assigned to drive the truck with the trailer everywhere. The only way to get good at backing trailers is to back trailers. As the mentor told her apprentice: “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
Do you know how nerve-wracking it is to drive a 30,000-pound utility truck coupled to a trailer hauling an extra ton of dirt and materials through Atlanta? That’s the easy part of my driving day because I’m driving forward. Backing said truck and trailer along the curb on Peachtree Road while both lanes are blocked until I’m in the right-most lane with people honking because they can’t go forward is a nightmare. Fortunately, I have the breath work skills to calm myself, and backing a trailer every day has helped make new skills more automatic:
Pull forward enough to point the trailer directly where I want it to go
Use my mirrors
Use my spotter (always have a spotter - safety first!)
Find “the groove” where I barely have to move the wheel to stay straight
Abort early and pull forward to reset
Driving forward is easy. You look forward. You go left when you turn left. Everyone in your lane is going the same direction. It’s so mindless that we’ve all had the experience of driving to a destination without remembering a second of getting there. That is not possible while backing. You’re mentally engaged. Your controls are inverted. There is pressure because everyone wants you out of the way as quickly as possible. You’re present because being in the moment is essential to getting the trailer where it must go.
I feel that we could all benefit from adding a backing mindset to our personal and professional goals. Pausing for a few moments to evaluate where we want to be and identifying alternate pathways. Using our “mirrors” to get different angles on where we are going, and, critically, having a spotter! The spotter keeps me from backing into mailboxes and other trucks. It’s someone looking out for me on the crew. We all need spotters in achieving the goals in our lives, but we seldom ask for that different perspective. Preferring instead to advance with our own limited view toward our objective. Only telling our friends when we’ve succeeded. When it is more likely that we’d succeed faster and more easily with their assistance.
Perhaps going backward, or at least thinking backward, is a strategy that can improve our decision-making and increase our chances of reaching our goals. Known as “Retrograde Analysis", this type of thinking encourages looking backward in order to truly move forward.
