Daniel F.Chambliss observed 100s of swimmers at every level of ability, over some half a dozen years to analyse what causes ‘excellence’. By ‘excellence’ he means “consistent superiority of performance.”
Here are the major takeways from this 10 page research paper:
Excellence is not the product of personality characteristics. The excellent swimmers don’t appear to be oddballs, nor are they loners. Traits such as confidence could be an effect of achievement, not the cause of it. There aren’t any obvious character traits that leads to higher chances of excellence.
Excellence does not result from quantitative changes in behavior. Quantitative improvements involve doing more of the same thing. Increased training time does not make one swim fast. Simply doing more of the same will not lead to excellence.
Rather, excellence Requires Qualitative Differentiation. A qualitative change involves modifying what is actually being done, not simply doing more of it. It involves doing things differently. Swimmers, for example, can differentiate qualitatively on the dimensions of (i) technique, (ii) discipline & (iii) attitude.
Excellence does not result from some special inner ‘Talent’. ‘Talent’ or ‘natural ability’ or ‘gift’ is a myth. These terms are generally used to mystify the essentially mundane processes of achievement in sports, keeping us away from a realistic analysis of the actual factors creating superlative performances, and protecting us from a sense of responsibility for our own outcomes.
Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but once practiced consistently together, allows the athlete to swim a bit faster. Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, & added up over time.
Motivation is mundane, too. Top swimmers go to practice each day because each day is fun & rewarding. They find their challenges in smaller short term achievable goals such as working on a better start this week, & polishing up their backstroke technique next week etc. Even given the longer-term goals like winning the Olympics, the daily satisfactions need to be there. The very features of the sport that others find unpleasant & boring — swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours — , top swimmers enjoy & find it peaceful, even meditative, often challenging, or therapeutic.
It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don’t see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it.
In the pursuit of excellence, maintaining mundanity is the key psychological challenge.
There is no secret; there is only the doing of all those little things, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit, an ordinary part of one’s everyday life.
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