Hi there Thinking Doing Crew!!

Happy almost 2026. How exciting!!

I was late with the last newsletter, so I’m getting this one in before enjoying a break over the festive period. I hope you have some lovely things planned too, or another break to look forward to if you’re working through this one!

This issue:

Master your perception to make better decisions

Your guide to a robust 2026 strategy (in the form of a new workshop!)

Low-tech gift vouchers

Some Christmas self-care tips

Thanks so much for your support, interest, and enthusiasm this year. As I keep growing and developing Intelligent Action, your interaction, engagement, conversations, bookings, feedback, insights, questions, referrals, shares, curiosity, t-shirts-and-hoodies-in-the-wild photos, and the sense of purpose and community this continues to foster really means a lot!

Kath

Perception and perspective

I went for a ride the other day (just for something different)! A friend and I were sessioning some of the trickier features on our trickier trails. The easier, B-line was ridable if we backed ourselves and got a few things right on the way down. It was pretty steep, and there’s a lot of extra bark and leaf litter on the ground at the moment because Summer In Australia.

Eyeing off the A-line made me pause. It was one long, exposed rocky slab. While the rock offered reliable traction because it was too steep for any leaf litter to grip onto, there was less room for error—nowhere to stop or put a foot down if things went how I hoped they wouldn’t.

It looked ridable, and I was about to give it a go when I remembered that I don’t have the depth perception of most other people. Clear vision comes and goes for me depending on a number of factors: salt, hydration, fatigue, and whether my eyes and my brain are working well together in a given moment. Most of the time I see in what’s probably closer to a slightly blurred 2.5D than high-def 3D. This has the advantage of making most trails (and hill climbs) look way less steep than they are. But it can also give me a confidence that’s a little too high for the thing I’m about to do….like ride that long rock slab, or climb the type of hill that most people complain about.

I yelled from the top of the descent to my friend cheering at the bottom that I had no depth perception. Without judgement, or questions, she started pointing out how small she looked from far away, exaggerating the smallness like a stand-up comic in a TV show I used to love as a kid.

“It must actually be pretty steep,” I thought, laughing. Come to think of it, it was mighty hard to walk up it, so that’s some usual non-visual info on the steepness as well. I decided to come back later with extra padding and a helmet that would better protect my teeth. It was a good decision built on data beyond just what my eyes were telling me.

In 2025, I started vision therapy, and I've been incredibly motivated by the difference it’s made to what I used to call ‘vegetable soup vision’ (when the trails sometimes look like a vague, murky mess). It’s also taught me an enormous amount about the strategies I’ve developed over the last 40+ years to ride a bike quickly when the shape, texture, and 3D-ness of the fast-approaching surface is unclear.

These are transferable strategies for remembering, visualising, predicting, feeling, imagining, pacing, technique, and emotion-regulation—all critical for reducing mental load while keeping a healthy focus (mental and visual) where it counts.

The moral of this story is that you don’t need to see everything, or know everything, or be able to do everything to make a good decision or achieve your goals. A robust strategy allows for multiple ways of gathering information, leaning on others, and adding a buffer for that first leap of faith.

As you set your own eyes on 2026, remember you don’t have to know, see, or be able to do everything either. If you’re feeling stuck, or if your progress has plateaued, the skillsets you need to overcome those challenges are already there, just waiting to be augmented, sharpened or brought into focus in a way that works for you.

Get in touch if I can help you refine your own strategies in those early stages of trying a new thing, or the forever-learning, upskilling and continuously-improving stages. And next time you’re doing something really well, take a moment to reflect on the strategies that allowed you to do it. They might not have been so obvious early on but they almost certainly give forward to how you approach other tricky challenges as well.

New online workshop! Book now for Jan 29th!

I’ve just launched a new online interactive workshop. Come with a big goal for the year, whether that’s in work, sport, health or another part of life. Leave with more clarity and confidence on how you’ll achieve it, with some research-backed strategies to improve your resilience and overcome any unexpected challenges along the way.

Any questions, get in touch by replying to this email.

Places are limited to 15 to keep things focused and inclusive. 💚

Read all about it and book here

Christmas gifting

It turns out the course platform and the coaching booking systems I use don’t support gift vouchers. That’s a sad!

If you want to give the online Mind Skills For Mountain Bikers course as a gift, or gift an online coaching session to a mountain biker you love, book it as normal, send me an email (hello@intelligentaction.cc), and I’ll send you a PDF voucher with instructions for the gift receiver to take your place instead.

Tip 1: Book the coaching session a fair way in advance so the date is flexible.

Tip 2: You can also gift yourself one of these things too!! 😉

This week on the internet

If Christmas is one of your least favourite times of the year, here’s a great post from Newcastle-based Life Matters Psychologists with tips for taking care of yourself over the next few days.

I love Christmas, but regular movement time outside is also an important way to keep a sense of rhythm and manage the long-drives-and-catch-ups-at-tables-energy for me!

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