I had a classmate who was a high achiever. He had great expectations. Recently, he committed suicide.

Sir Bradley has great expectations of getting over 55km in his hour attempt. He fell short. Now, he will be remembered for getting so close to the mark – but not quite getting there.

Charles Dickens penned his ‘Great Expectations’ to treat his readers into a journey of the unexpected.  Like all classic tales, the plot twists and weaves along into unexpected results.

Given the uncertainty of the future, we all still persist in expecting things to turn out as we “WILL’ them to. Parents are the greatest sinners against their children in this regard. Expectant parents and confused kids make for a highly stressful and unrewarding childhood.

On the other end of the scale is ‘NO Expectations’.

I had a happy weekend. Even though the Sydney Road titles at Penrith Lakes were a lightly attended day of racing, any competition is tough. Masters 6 was a fairly quiet affair on a cold start to the day.

After decades of racing ‘opens’, I have an outstanding record. NIL wins or places. So, Saturday morning started with no expectations.

On the Prime lap, I decided to attack. The unexpected happened. For almost a lap, no one chased. Suddenly, I had won a Prime.

Roland Lang rolled off the front soon after to stretch his legs. The unexpected happened again. No one chased. Roland had the rare (and lonely) opportunity to time trial to the finish about half a lap in front. It was the first time he had to sprint against himself to win gold…

I challenged the bunch on the last lap by jumping off for a long sprint. When I looked around on the final left-hander, there was unexpected daylight behind me. I couldn’t believe that I had won the bunch sprint.

It wasn’t until we were returning our race numbers when it was revealed that a rider in our race had snuck past the M4 bunch in front of us and he had already collected the silver. But when you have no expectations, a bronze and a $30 Prime is pretty cool…

Start your day with no expectations and you will always be pleasantly surprised by what happens. Start it with great expectations, and you will always be disappointed.

But does having no expectations mean that we will lose our sense of purpose?

One always overestimate what can be achieved in a day and underestimate what can be achieved in a lifetime. (Bill Gates said it differently – but the result is the same).

In the same way, Great Expectations is short term tactics and NO Expectations is long term strategy.