This is the second of a series of posts on things I learned from riding my recumbent 150km across the Czech republic, Slovakia and lower Austria.

When I planned for my trip to take my bike home, I did two things: 1.) I checked for the train to bring me to Uhsersky Brod and 2.) I checked my route back. Due to my terrible planning skills I ended up doing this the night before I left. Thus I was not able to buy any decent bike map for the area. I went on Google maps, asked it to give me directions from Uhersky Brod to Vienna for walking, and simply took down the villages it would lead me through one by one. I ended up with a long list of names, occasionally I had street numbers on it. I hoped this would work out well. It did, and it did better than I thought. Because I just had a list of goals, each between 5 and 25km apart, the journey was full of achievements. Instead of longing for the big goal (Vienna) and asking myself when and how long I'll still be on the road, I focused on reaching the next town on the list.

The strategy of breaking big goals down to small bits, feel familiar to people who read Getting Things Done or similar pieces of literature. It is an amazing psychological trick, helping you to focus on what you are doing right now and what needs to be done next, rather than the far away goal. I had read this before but I never had the practical understanding I gained on that day