The Halfway Point
As I make this post, I am passing the halfway point of the 63 posts that make up The Neurocycle. Woohoo! It’s all downhill from here!
Which makes me wonder, why do we tend to make such a big deal about the halfway point of anything? It seems like a very arbitrary point at which to celebrate, and yet somehow it just feels right to celebrate. After giving it some thought, here are a few reasons I’ve come up with.
First, there’s the ease of measurement. It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that 31.5 is half of 63; most of us can do this arithmetic in our heads without even trying. True, in most cases we have only calculated half of the length of the task, not the actual volume of effort required to complete it, but that’s the point. The length of the task (either in time or in distance) is usually the part that’s easy to measure, and that’s why we can be certain (and happy) that we’ve reached the halfway mark.
Second, there’s the notion of repeatability. The logic goes that if you can do something once, then you can do it again, so if you’ve done the first half of a task you can do the second half. There are of course dozens of assumptions built into that if/then statement: the assumption that you haven’t depleted your available resources including time, that the two halves of the task are completely identical, and so on. But in general it’s a sound notion, and we stick to it unless we’re shown good reason not to.
Finally, there’s the need for encouragement in the form of finish line information. Have you ever finished a long bicycle ride where you didn’t know exactly where/when it would end? Those last few miles seemed to take forever, didn’t they? That’s precisely because we didn’t know for sure they were in fact the last few miles…we thought the ride might be much longer, so we were preparing ourselves mentally for a much longer ride and getting more anxious by the minute until we finally saw the finish line with our own eyes. When we know and are reminded of the finish line’s proximity, we are much more confident in pushing ourselves all the way to that point.
Here endeth the lesson on the halfway point.
Bike Newbie 