Insights form Greville Road Hill

They say that a picture speaks a thousand words......... well this is a typical weekday morning coming onto the Greville Road interchange in Auckland. This was in fact the unlikely venue for my latest little revelation I want to share with you.

I am going to show you a  second picture of the hill just before the interchange so you can picture what I am talking about.

 

 

As a regular frequenter of this particular interchange at about 6.30am the format that you see is quite important. Here is the relevant information you need to know.

 

• There are 3 lines that travel up the hill with another  lane that develops for the on ramp with the lights as you can see in the first picture.
• Because the on ramp traffic is staggered by lights on the ramp lights only turning green at  20 second intervals .The fourth lane is open for traffic to race up the left hand side and try and jump back into the bumper to bumper traffic. (The photo does not completely represent the bumper to bumper traffic at 6.30am.)
• When you have completed this manoeuvre you may on a good day make  a gain of about 400meters or slightly more. You do however risk being caught on the inside lane amongst all the traffic merging at Greville Road as in the first picture.
• To avoid this you must the cut across the lanes(if you can)  to get from the inside lane to the outside lane because after Greville Road for a period of time the outside lane is quicker.
• If you come up the Greville Road Hill in the outside lane all the way in the initial timeframe it is the slowest by quite some margin, but it will get better.

Now that probably seems very complicated and what is the point anyway.

 

 



Now I was in fact a regular lane jumper when I first started my Auckland commute. I enjoyed the cut and thrust of it all but after I while I just stopped and decided it wasn't worth the effort for 400 meters or about 4-5 minutes at best. So I just stay in the right hand lane and slowly climbed the hill.





 

This week was the start of the school holidays which meant there was less traffic on the road. So everyday the inside lane began to look more appealing. I in the end made no change.

 

I began to think about it why was I not interested in jumping lanes after all 5 minutes is 5 minutes in the 6.30 rush hour!. The conclusion was inertia.

 

inertia

ɪˈnəːʃə/

noun

1. 1.

   a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

   "the bureaucratic inertia of the various tiers of government"

   
   

   synonyms:

   inactivity, inaction, inactiveness, inertness, passivity, apathy,  accidie,malaise, stagnation, dullness, enervation, sluggishness,  lethargy, languor,languidness, listlessness, torpor, torpidity, idleness,  indolence, laziness,sloth, slothfulness;
2. 2.

   PHYSICS

   a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

   "the power required to overcome friction and the inertia of the moving parts"

   
   

 

It was easier for me to remain travelling the same way than to make change OR there was not enough gain in for me to make change. It occurred to me we live so much of our lives like that subject to the inertia. We perceive that the gain we will make or have made is not valuable enough to sustain the level of activity. Will what I get out of this decision justify the effort........will it break my personal inertia to move in different direction!

 

Now I am not saying this is right or wrong, but it is just such a strong influence \in how we actually make decisions. No matter what we know about decision making strategies.

 

Next time you make a decision ask yourself is this the best decision for me or am I just under the influence of inertia. I would suggest that the only external force such as desire or some strong negative influence will overcome our inertia in the long term.

 

Happy decision making!! Until next week!!