This is a summary of “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers” by Daniel F. Chambliss.
In three sentences
The author has spent a lot of time reporting on all levels of swimming competition and writes about observations about the differences between them.
The differences in abilities of different levels of competition are not because of quantitative differences like “more training” but qualitative differences like using a flip turn instead of just touching the wall and turning around. Qualitative differences narrow to “technique”, “discipline” and “attitude”.
Impressions
The notion that success is boring or that there are no “quick tricks” to success is quite like the Jim Collins’ lessons in “Good to Great” that there were no “turning points” in companies distinguished as more successful. Instead, per those companies’ exit interviews, their internal experience was just a long slog of improvement and so it was only the external observer’s view that looked like someone had some amazing insight that turned everything around and saved the day.
The idea of “being stuck”, “certainly swimmers typically remain within a certain level for most of their careers, maintaining through-out their careers the habits with which they began,” I think I have personally felt from time to time with learning piano. Even though I had been a student of the piano now for maybe twenty years, I think I have only recently really started stepping up (last 2-3 years or so). And literally I started learning the Chopin “Etudes” (or Studies opus 10) since the early part of this year, in which Chopin is known to say that the Etudes were written in a way to force you to un-learn a lot of what you have learned. One insight I pieced together a few months ago was in hitting keys after actually knowing your fingers were in the correct position. That seems kind of obvious, but a lot of my practice in “Etude op 10 no 1”, I would play multiple notes with a finger (instead of one note per finger) because of the amount of traveling your right hand does on the keyboard. But at one point I think I consciously started to trying making sure my fingers were properly placed and the errors just went down by definition. That did slow down the playing a little bit of course, but also hearing the right sounds is much more pleasurable for myself and anybody listening in the vicinity.
Probably the biggest take-away from this article is that one must learn from failure faster. You practice in your weak areas and not what you are already good at. You keep on trying things outside of your area of comfort and you seek out feedback. Rinse and repeat.
Qutoes list
“Simply doing more of the same will not lead to moving up a level in the sport.”
“The very features of the sport which the C swimmer finds unpleasant, the top level swimmer enjoys. What others see as boring–swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, say–they find peaceful, even meditative, often challenging or therapeutic.”
Yea this also reminds me of this concept around that I think is described in the book the “Motivation Myth” (have not read this yet but I heard a description), that waiting to become motivated to do something you will never get around to it. And that discipline is kind of like short circuiting the gap between idea and action. And most importantly, that you end up liking what you do once you start doing it and getting good. I feel like there is another quote around the similar vein of “love what you do not do what you love.”