If I should name one thing that has most shaped my personality and ability to tolerate uncertainty, exhaustion, and complexity, it is orienteering.

Equally, if I should name one skill I find most crucial for navigating a career, living abroad, building businesses, and keeping it all together, it is the tolerance for uncertainty, detours, and exhaustion combined with the ability to plan in an ordered way.

For that reason I find orienteering likely one of the most underrated sports out there.

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What orienteering actually is

For those who don’t know, in all its simplicity it is navigating in a forest with a map from one control point to another.

There is no support or anything in the deep forest indicating your way. It is just you, your compass, and the trust in yourself that you can do it and you can get out from there.

And it is physically very demanding, which makes rational and spotless decision making and choosing of routes even more challenging.

A competition map from Portugal Orienteering Week in 2023 (POM 2023).

Why I think about it differently now

Funnily, I have never really written about the sport or made a big number of it.

But when I think about it, there are very few occasions in modern life where you can train those skills at the same time and be put in a situation where you really need to find the strength and ability from within. No panic allowed.

I ran my first competition when I was six years old and it just came so naturally to me.

Understanding the patterns, translating the abstract map to read the terrain, the ambition to optimise the route and come out without errors and as fast as I could. And it is today more than ever that I realise how much that sport has given me and how many lessons it holds for everyone.

The orienteer mode for business & life

Not everyone needs to go to the forest to learn those lessons.

But especially when I am building a business in an industry from the ground up (more about that later), I find myself going into the orienteer mode. The rules are surprisingly the same in business and in anything worth of pursuing.

Know your next most crucial step before everything else.
Have your direction correct.
Simplify the route where you can and remember the shortest route is not always the best.
Focus on details only when it is necessary for going forward.
Slow down when there is too much to handle.
And most importantly, my biggest weakness, just before you are about to reach the objective, stay focused till the end and never assume you are there yet.
And finally, there will be many people along the way who seem to have a point of view, go faster, or look like they have it all together. Don’t let that trick you. Stay on your path and trust yourself.

I have built more in the forest than I ever did in a classroom. And I am only now starting to understand how much of what I do today started there, and how much of those lessons are applicable for anyone who wants to go forward in business and life.

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Decision making & uncertainty