Progressive lenses and cycling is the thread. That's where I learned that there differences between lenses. My optician taught me what those differences are and how they can optimize different usages.

"Corridor" is optician jargon for the intermediate section of the lens that progresses from distance to near vision. Corridor lengths are primarily to fit smaller or larger frames, but can also be used to fine-tune for intended use.

At work I spend most of my day in the intermediate zone, so we concentrated on that region when selecting the lenses. My lenses have a longer corridor than you would typically put in a frame the size I bought, and the lenses we chose have one of the widest corridors available.

I'm not sure if I've linked to them, but I ended up with Seiko Surmounts in my everyday glasses, and Zeiss GT2s in my polarized sunglasses.

The Seikos are a "soft" design and have a wider corridor, the GT2s have features of both "soft" and "hard" designs. I have to say I prefer the off-axis astigmatism control in the Zeiss lenses, but for work, I like the Seikos for their intermediate zone, even if the off-axis astigmatism control isn't as nice.

Up this thread a ways, 3 circles sounds like she could be helpful in explaining things, and making corrections to anything I've gotten wrong. Other 50+ opticians replied in the thread I linked above.

Hope this helps!