Lessons From My Father - Ergonomics

Marginal gains are, since Team Sky, all the rage in cycling. There is of course nothing new about marginal gains, even in cycling.

One of the many calamities about the sport's obsession with drugs was that the energy needed to sustain the pursuit of marginal gains was spent finding more and different ways to cheat and stay ahead of the testers.

Marginal gains are certainly nothing new to me. I was introduced to the concept as a child by my father, the son on a Swiss peasant farmer who came to the UK and ended up have a key part in the rollout of "System X" a breakthrough digital tecnnology that was an enabler to the communications revolution that we are experiencing today (and is still providing a service to some folks even 40 years later).

He didn't call it "marginal gains". His pet phrase was "ergonomics". But the idea was the same and brutally simple.

If you do something more than once aim to do it a little bit better the next time. And the next time and the next ad infinitum.

If you have to make things for a living as my dad did and as did the company that I worked with for near 30 years you either follow this dictum or you die.

Makers have been pursuing "marginal gains" forever, through the whole course of human history from the time someone improved a blunt rock by turning it into a sharp knife.

In this pursuit these unseen, unremarked makers have contributed more towards all the good things that we now can enjoy, like System X and its successors, than all the kings, queens, emperors, admirals and generals that fill the pages of history books.

Me, I follow my dad's example every time I clip in and ride. I am aiming to just do one thing a little better this time than the last.

This is the fundamental drive that sustains my interest and keeps me motivated. It is the, by far, the main reason for me being as successful as I have been. For me marginal gainis is not just about improving the speed at which I can ride, it's about improving the quality of how I live.