Neither Patrick nor I ran Ironman Wisconsin (it’s way out of my league, and Patrick’s Ironman isn’t until May). That said, one of the quotables from Trifuel’s Race Preview stuck in my head:

What truly separates one course from another isn’t total elevation gain, winds, etc, but rather how often it forces you to make a decision. Lots of little good decisions create a good day. Lots of little bad decisions add up to create a very bad day. At Wisconsin you are making decisions for the entire 112 miles. Flat, false flat, up, down, left, right, head/cross/tailwind, do I shift/not shift into my small/big ring? Do I power or noodle up this little/big hill? On the Wisconsin course you are never doing any one single thing for longer than about five minutes. This creates the opportunity to make a lot of little (and big) mistakes that express themselves somewhere on the run.

Seth Godin recently made similar comments about running a business:

What should you do next?

Is it better to email an existing customer, send a brochure to a prospect or improve your product a bit? Should you tweet or post a new blog post? Should you have a meeting to coordinate your team or spend ten minutes returning phone calls instead?

This is an unheralded skill, something successful people do really well and others struggle with.

I notice this as a music blogger and music zealot. What should I listen to now? Not in general, but exactly right now? A guilty pleasure, or something with substance? A new artist, an old artist, or an old! artist? This band is defunct: should I file a dispatch on them anyway? When recommending an LP do I type my thoughts out right now, while the terrain is unfamiliar and exciting? Or do I wait until I have my hands around the tree, but the Shazam! has worn off somewhat? If I change my mind about an artist do I post an update?

I think musicians and record producers have it much harder, though.

Think of all the little things that can ruin a song: the singer won’t shut up, the song is a minute too short, or a minute too long. It follows too closely to convention, or is too experimental-for-its-own-sake. The drummer just has to over-express himself, or the guitarist does, or the accordion player. Or they under-express. It reeks too pungently of “indie,” or “alt-country,” or “glam metal,” or whatever other trade genre into which the band members have decided to shoehorn themselves. You don’t notice this in a good song because that’s exactly what makes it a good song: wise decisions that are built upon previous wise decisions that in turn are built upon previous wise decisions are, by definition, signs (or non-signs) of expert songwriting. Solo musicians have it hard enough, but I simply can’t imagine what it must be like to write a song as a band. In addition to an ensemble of five free moral agents writing one song composed of five competing licks, you’ve also got five temperaments and five potential vetoes in the room. Five different cell phones going off. Five different beer drinkers or five pot smokers. Do we add cello here? If so, do we add french horn? And if we add french horn, might it work without the cello? I want to pay homage to Ray Charles here and to Steven Tyler here. What do you have against Steven Tyler, anyway? Do we need a cymbal crash here? How about here? Or here? Here…? Here…? Here…? Percussion here, here or here?

I have almost no basis at all for saying this, but I think Radiohead does very nearly the best job of making the myriad of little choices. Even more, of not falsely forcing unnecessary choices upon themselves.

Strange then that they are not my favorite band. My favorite band is Arcade Fire, who doesn’t do nearly as good of a job at this, but succeeds nevertheless.