The Art of Manliness - The Mundanity of Excellence

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.640 40 years ago, now retired professor of sociology Daniel Chambliss performed a field study in which

00:00:16.820 he observed an elite swim team to figure out what it was that led to excellence in any endeavor.

00:00:22.020 As Chambliss shared in a paper entitled The Mundanity of Excellence, the secret he discovered

00:00:26.180 is that there really is no secret and that success is more ordinary than mystical.

00:00:30.600 As mundane as the factors and qualities that lead to excellence really are, they can still

00:00:34.440 run contrary to what we sometimes think makes for high achievement.

00:00:37.580 Today on the show, I unpack the sometimes unexpected elements of excellence with Daniel.

00:00:41.660 We discuss how desire is more important than discipline, the central role of one's social

00:00:45.520 group in surrounding yourself with the best of the best, the outsized importance of the

00:00:48.900 small things, why you need to make being good your job, why motivation is mundane, and why

00:00:53.620 you need to keep a sense of mundanity, even as you become excellent.

00:00:56.660 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash excellence.

00:01:11.000 All right.

00:01:15.920 Daniel Chambliss, welcome to the show.

00:01:17.980 Thanks, Brett.

00:01:18.660 Glad to be here.

00:01:19.440 So you are a sociologist, and early in your career, you did a field study of Olympic swimmers

00:01:26.620 to figure out what made excellent swimmers excellent.

00:01:30.900 What was your interest in excellence, and why did you choose to study swimmers to crack

00:01:37.100 that nut?

00:01:38.020 Well, in my academic training, I'm a social psychologist of organizations, which means I'm

00:01:42.940 interested in how people work in organizational settings and what produces high performance.

00:01:48.760 And leadership and morale and issues like that.

00:01:52.860 So when I finished my PhD at Yale, I was looking around for another project.

00:01:58.220 And this was 40 years ago.

00:02:00.780 And the 1984 Olympics were going to be in Los Angeles.

00:02:05.040 Now, I had been a competitive swimmer myself in high school.

00:02:09.040 I was not particularly good, but I was really, really into the sport.

00:02:14.300 Like, I just loved it and loved working out and wanted to do better and so on.

00:02:18.340 And I did reasonably well in the local context, but I never made the national championships

00:02:24.140 or anything like that.

00:02:25.200 So I had always been curious why these other people, including people I knew, were doing

00:02:31.520 so much better than I was.

00:02:32.900 And it was always kind of a mystery.

00:02:35.180 So when the LA Olympics came along, I thought, well, maybe I could go out there, out to Southern

00:02:40.560 California, which is where the best people were training, and watch them for a while and

00:02:46.300 figure out what made them good.

00:02:49.140 And so I went, I did that.

00:02:50.720 I lived in Southern California for a while.

00:02:53.740 I lived with a couple of coaches who were working with what was at that point the best team

00:02:58.680 in the world, really, and tried to understand why they were better.

00:03:03.800 Plus, I was also coaching in the same period of time.

00:03:07.400 I was coaching a little local team in upstate New York, where I live.

00:03:11.500 And we were lousy, frankly.

00:03:13.660 And I was not a good coach.

00:03:15.120 And again, it was kind of a mystery.

00:03:16.820 I didn't know why.

00:03:17.820 So I wanted to understand that.

00:03:19.560 That's how I got into it.

00:03:21.080 And the result of that, you wrote a book called Champions.

00:03:23.640 And I picked up a copy, I was able to find a used copy.

00:03:26.820 Really great.

00:03:27.560 And you talk about what you observed with these swimmers, with the coaches.

00:03:32.140 And then it also ended up being a paper that you wrote, The Mundanity of Excellence.

00:03:37.500 And we're going to talk about it.

00:03:38.360 I want to dig into this.

00:03:39.080 Because I think a lot of people, they want to be excellent in whatever they're doing.

00:03:42.980 And as you said, sometimes it's a mystery.

00:03:44.600 Like, why is it like, I'm doing, I feel like I'm doing the things that I should be doing.

00:03:48.640 But why aren't I thriving the way I want?

00:03:51.680 And one of the conclusions that you got from this study that you did for several years

00:03:56.700 is that different levels of the sport of swimming are qualitatively different from each other.

00:04:03.880 What do you mean by that?

00:04:04.980 Like, what are the differences between C-level and A-level swimmers?

00:04:09.200 Well, and not only in swimming.

00:04:10.860 I think this is true in business or in the arts or any area you pick.

00:04:15.940 Is that there are these qualitative levels.

00:04:18.800 In other words, people do things differently.

00:04:20.840 They're not just doing more in order to be, say, an Olympic class athlete.

00:04:26.260 And it's not even that they're just working harder, although that is probably true.

00:04:31.420 But their techniques are different.

00:04:33.900 Their attitudes about the sport are different.

00:04:36.740 Their goals are totally different.

00:04:39.020 I mean, people training for the Olympics want to win Olympic medals.

00:04:42.120 People at the local level where I was coaching initially, that never even occurred to them,

00:04:47.740 obviously, I guess, to try to be that good or even to try to be very good in particular.

00:04:53.360 They were there more, frankly, it was more like a babysitting service, to be honest about it,

00:04:59.540 when I first started.

00:05:00.700 And yeah, there was swimming involved and people kind of liked doing that.

00:05:04.080 But they weren't going to put in anything like the effort needed to win a state championship,

00:05:09.560 much less go to the Olympics.

00:05:10.700 So, and again, I think that applies in all sorts of different areas of activity.

00:05:15.200 First off, you got to want to do it.

00:05:17.540 And so, yeah, the qualitative difference is a big thing you found.

00:05:19.660 Because I think a lot of people, when they think about how can I get better,

00:05:22.740 they think, well, I just got to do more.

00:05:24.640 They think about quantity.

00:05:25.880 I just got to practice, practice, practice more.

00:05:28.200 The 10,000 hour rule is what they think.

00:05:31.620 Well, funny you should bring that up.

00:05:33.920 Because what's left out of that, that idea, which Malcolm Gladwell used,

00:05:41.660 actually comes from a guy named Anders Ericsson, who I knew a little bit, passed away recently,

00:05:47.820 actually.

00:05:48.560 But Anders Ericsson found that, in fact, top level performers in all sorts of areas

00:05:54.260 had to spend at least 10,000 hours practicing before they could get to that level.

00:06:00.740 10 years is the way he originally framed it.

00:06:03.700 And that's true.

00:06:04.880 But what's left out, when most people talk about it, is it's not just the time.

00:06:09.340 You have to pay attention during all those hours.

00:06:12.660 It's deliberate practice, is the phrase he used.

00:06:15.640 That is, you have to really concentrate on what you're doing while you're practicing.

00:06:22.640 That's unusual.

00:06:24.320 A lot of people just go through the motions.

00:06:26.420 Doesn't work.

00:06:27.380 Doesn't work.

00:06:28.260 So you mentioned one of the things that makes elite level swimmers different from other

00:06:32.660 swimmers in the field.

00:06:34.180 Of course, elite level swimmers are very disciplined.

00:06:36.360 They're more disciplined than, say, the rec league swimmer.

00:06:39.080 Yes.

00:06:39.680 But one of the surprising things you found in your study, in your observation,

00:06:43.500 is that the discipline of elite swimmers, it doesn't seem to be the kind of white-knuckled

00:06:50.620 type of discipline, where they're gritting their teeth and they're just, they're hating it.

00:06:55.620 How does the attitude between A-level swimmers and C-level swimmers differ?

00:07:01.260 Yes.

00:07:01.880 Well, I'll give you an example.

00:07:03.780 One day when I was in California at Mission Viejo, this club I was studying,

00:07:08.820 there were people on that team who were, well, there were eight people who wound up

00:07:13.500 winning Olympic gold medals.

00:07:15.000 That's how good the team was.

00:07:17.340 But one day we came into practice and a group of, it was guys, it was all boys who did this,

00:07:25.360 went out, you know, late teenagers.

00:07:28.000 They went out one day and swam eight lengths.

00:07:30.960 They raced eight lengths of Lake Mission Viejo.

00:07:33.920 That lake is a mile long.

00:07:37.020 They raced eight laps of a mile long lake.

00:07:43.540 And they came in.

00:07:44.520 Now, if I ever did such a thing, I would probably fall over dead.

00:07:48.040 But a lot of people, that's not most people's idea of fun.

00:07:52.700 And they did it and they came back and they were bouncing up and down and laughing and joking

00:07:57.880 and just having the best time talking about what they had just done.

00:08:01.060 They enjoy working hard.

00:08:03.880 That's what it was.

00:08:04.860 They enjoyed not just swimming, which was certainly true, but swimming fast and pushing themselves

00:08:12.540 beyond all kinds of limits and so on.

00:08:14.480 They like it.

00:08:15.900 That's a big difference from, again, you go to a much lower level team.

00:08:21.240 You see, for instance, coaches who make kids swim butterfly to punish them.

00:08:26.100 That's a terrible attitude because it's supposed to be an enjoyable thing.

00:08:33.020 And you want people to feel like what they're doing is fulfilling and exciting and fun and

00:08:38.860 all of that.

00:08:40.300 So one thing I noticed right away was that these swimmers I was studying, who were all national

00:08:46.280 caliber swimmers right from the beginning when they came to the team, they like swimming

00:08:52.340 a lot and they do it all the time and it's not a tedious thing or, you know, it's not

00:08:58.640 like mom has to make them go to practice. 0.85

00:09:01.220 They love it.

00:09:02.560 For the most part, there are exceptions, but for the most part, people love doing it.

00:09:08.020 Yeah.

00:09:08.140 You wrote about them.

00:09:09.700 What others see as boring, swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, they

00:09:14.680 find peaceful, meditative, therapeutic.

00:09:17.640 Coming into the 5.30 a.m. practices, many of the swimmers are lively, laughing, talking,

00:09:23.160 enjoying themselves, perhaps appreciating the fact that most people would positively hate

00:09:27.460 doing it.

00:09:28.120 It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals.

00:09:33.280 Often, they don't see what they do as sacrificial at all.

00:09:36.280 They like it.

00:09:37.180 Yeah.

00:09:37.720 I think this is really a powerful idea because I think there's a popular idea amongst people

00:09:41.960 if they want to improve themselves, whether they want to exercise more or whatever self-improvement

00:09:48.440 habit they have, they think it's got to be unpleasant.

00:09:51.460 It's got to be hard.

00:09:52.660 And if it's not unpleasant and it feels like I'm enjoying myself, then I must be doing something

00:09:56.580 wrong.

00:09:58.000 Your studies, if it feels hard and unpleasant, then you're probably doing it wrong.

00:10:02.780 Then you're probably doing it wrong.

00:10:04.200 No, I think that's true.

00:10:05.440 And it's a real important point you've just made.

00:10:08.420 From the outside, it looks like it's hard.

00:10:12.240 And from the outside, it looks like, wow, that takes a lot of self-discipline.

00:10:16.780 And it certainly does in a certain sense.

00:10:20.720 But a lot of folks, the key to this is getting together with other people who also like doing

00:10:27.780 it.

00:10:28.740 And so, I like to say self-discipline is hard.

00:10:32.340 Conformity is easy.

00:10:34.500 That is, if you're in a group where everybody's doing it, it makes it feel much easier.

00:10:41.060 You know, like, yeah, we're laughing and joking or whatever, but this is something we're into.

00:10:46.060 And it becomes a way of bonding with other people, not of separating yourself.

00:10:51.900 And again, I think that's something you don't realize often as a spectator because the TV

00:10:59.440 coverage of the Olympics, for instance, tends to glorify the individuals.

00:11:03.620 And in swimming, swimming is an individual sport for the most part.

00:11:07.640 I mean, there are relays, but mostly one, you get up on the blocks and you dive in.

00:11:11.280 You're on your own.

00:11:12.280 Nobody else is helping you.

00:11:13.480 But I have never met an Olympic class swimmer who trained by themselves.

00:11:22.360 They don't.

00:11:23.300 It's a team operation.

00:11:24.820 They go in every morning and they're there with 50 or 70 other people all working towards

00:11:31.360 very similar goals and thinking this is valuable and so on.

00:11:35.440 So, yeah, if you're going to exercise, find a buddy.

00:11:38.680 Find a workout buddy.

00:11:40.000 Makes it a lot easier.

00:11:41.260 Well, two things that I've taken from that idea.

00:11:45.020 Okay.

00:11:45.220 So, first is for me, I find that I stick to things longer and do them more intensely when

00:11:52.140 I enjoy them.

00:11:53.120 So, for exercise, I've been doing weightlifting for a long time and got really, I got pretty

00:11:58.460 competitive with it.

00:11:59.600 Not too competitive.

00:12:00.560 I did some amateur meets.

00:12:01.600 But the reason I did it is because I just loved it.

00:12:03.920 I just enjoyed doing it.

00:12:05.460 If I was sick, I'd even try to find a way to train.

00:12:08.180 Yeah.

00:12:08.440 Probably reduce things.

00:12:09.440 If I was on vacation, I would train.

00:12:11.940 And people would be like, oh, wow, you're so disciplined.

00:12:14.140 I'm like, no, it's not.

00:12:15.880 I just like doing this.

00:12:17.220 You know, my son plays video games every day and I never say to my son, man, you are so

00:12:21.720 disciplined that you play Fortnite every day.

00:12:24.800 Yeah.

00:12:25.100 It's like, no, he just, he likes playing Fortnite.

00:12:27.000 He likes Fortnite.

00:12:27.840 So, I think one thing, yeah.

00:12:29.120 So, I think a big takeaway is find something you like.

00:12:31.380 With exercise, find a way to make it enjoyable and you'll stick with it longer.

00:12:35.520 Absolutely.

00:12:36.040 And then going back to this, doing it with other people, we had Bob Bowman on the podcast.

00:12:42.640 Oh, yeah.

00:12:43.260 Sure.

00:12:43.840 Sure.

00:12:44.000 Yeah.

00:12:44.660 So, he was Michael Phelps' coach.

00:12:47.220 Yeah.

00:12:47.320 And he shared, you know, so he did competitive swimming before he became a coach.

00:12:52.400 And he talked about when he was in college, he was training to become an orchestral conductor.

00:12:59.080 And then he was also on the swim team.

00:13:01.720 And then he had this moment where he had to realize, I had to choose one or the other.

00:13:05.400 I couldn't do both.

00:13:07.300 And he said he chose the swim team because he just enjoyed the camaraderie more.

00:13:11.600 And that's how he, and I think it goes to what you were saying.

00:13:14.420 If you want to stick with something, find people to do it with that you enjoy being around.

00:13:19.960 Right.

00:13:20.320 Well, and I actually, when I heard that he felt that he had made that choice, I think

00:13:26.740 I saw an interview with him recently.

00:13:28.360 Maybe it was yours.

00:13:30.120 Is I thought, you know, he is kind of an orchestra conductor.

00:13:34.160 As a coach, that's what you're doing is you're orchestrating a group of people to work

00:13:40.380 together to produce high-level performances and getting them to cooperate with each other,

00:13:45.660 for instance, rather than have too much competition between them or, you know, planning out the

00:13:51.860 practices or figuring it, well, figuring out where to get the swimming pool is a big part

00:13:56.620 of it.

00:13:57.580 You know, is that sort of what conductors do as well, is help a group of different talented

00:14:03.020 individuals, let's say, work together for something.

00:14:06.300 So he's sort of probably got half his wish anyway.

00:14:09.060 Yeah.

00:14:09.960 So do you see this qualitative difference in attitude in other fields, like education?

00:14:15.260 Oh, absolutely.

00:14:16.280 I mean, education is a great example because, well, take myself as an example.

00:14:20.820 I grew up in a home where my parents were both readers.

00:14:24.820 Like my dad was just a voracious reader of anything.

00:14:27.700 And we had a lot of books in the house.

00:14:29.480 And that was something people did for fun when I grew up in our family.

00:14:35.800 It was just a big thing.

00:14:36.860 And my brother wound up being a newspaper editor.

00:14:41.200 And another one was writing training manuals for the army.

00:14:44.080 And another was a bookstore owner.

00:14:45.960 And, you know, we're academic, literate type people.

00:14:49.620 And so when people talk to me about reading books, you know, well, you like in school,

00:14:54.720 that was nothing to me.

00:14:56.340 It was just I thought that's just what people did all the time.

00:14:59.840 So I tend to read a lot more than most people.

00:15:02.140 It's not because I'm better in any way.

00:15:04.160 It's just it's just the way I grew up.

00:15:06.340 And a lot of the athletes I talked to, a lot of the swimmers came from very seriously

00:15:11.760 athletic families, you know, in different sports.

00:15:15.540 But they grew up in this in this frame of mind that sports is a good thing to do.

00:15:22.000 And it's valuable and important and enjoyable.

00:15:24.600 And there are methods you use for doing it and so on.

00:15:28.860 Actually, different sort of example.

00:15:30.860 People always say Mozart.

00:15:32.280 Oh, what a great musical genius and talent he was.

00:15:35.160 Wolfgang Mozart.

00:15:36.820 And yeah, that's true.

00:15:38.580 But he also grew up in a family where his dad was a world-class composer and his sister

00:15:43.220 was a world-class pianist.

00:15:45.760 That makes it a lot more easy in a sense.

00:15:48.340 I mean, you still have to work, but it gives you a big advantage if you grow up in an atmosphere

00:15:53.660 where that's what people are doing.

00:15:55.660 Well, speaking about this idea of attitude towards what you do to be successful, you wrote

00:15:59.800 an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal a few years ago entitled, Go Ahead, Drop My Course.

00:16:06.920 And you talk about how you're actually happy when a student comes to you and says, hey,

00:16:10.960 professor, I want to drop your course.

00:16:12.560 Why is that?

00:16:13.120 Well, it's not exactly that I'm happy about it, but I think it's a perfectly okay thing

00:16:20.140 for them to do.

00:16:21.520 Usually, if students come and want to drop a class that I'm teaching, they'll make a lot

00:16:26.860 of excuses and say, well, I have to do this other thing or, you know, and they want me

00:16:30.920 to know that it's not me.

00:16:32.900 It's not that they're somehow upset with me.

00:16:35.120 But it's fine with me if they're not interested in sociology, the field that I teach.

00:16:41.420 It's fine.

00:16:42.440 In a sense, I don't care.

00:16:44.720 I want them to have good lives, and it's just not for everybody.

00:16:49.320 And the op-ed I wrote because I had been coaching a girl in swimming who was 12 years old, and

00:16:56.800 she was a great swimmer. 0.80

00:16:58.340 There was no question.

00:16:59.260 She had excellent technique, and she was big and strong and smart and knew how to compete 1.00

00:17:04.780 and things like that.

00:17:05.680 And I kept trying to get her to train harder and aim for, you know, big championships, and 0.54

00:17:12.300 she just wasn't interested.

00:17:14.400 And so, I didn't know what to do, and I called up a friend who has coached Olympians and told

00:17:20.460 her the situation.

00:17:21.320 He sort of laughed.

00:17:22.160 He said, you want this more than she does.

00:17:24.000 And I was like, yeah, that might be true.

00:17:28.540 That might be true.

00:17:29.480 And he said, Dan, there's nothing morally wrong with not wanting to swim, you know?

00:17:37.860 Yeah.

00:17:38.060 You can be a perfectly good person and not care about this sport.

00:17:43.400 Just because I care about it, that doesn't mean she has to.

00:17:47.100 And the same was true in school.

00:17:48.960 A lot of people aren't interested in going to school, and that's fine, and they can live

00:17:54.740 happy, productive lives and be good citizens and everything.

00:17:58.340 And I hadn't thought about it quite that way before.

00:18:02.020 So, again, when students want to drop my course, I'll try to find out why.

00:18:06.200 And if it's something I'm doing wrong, I'll try to fix it.

00:18:09.660 But if they're just not interested in the subject, and that's not going to change, I'm like,

00:18:14.040 well, God bless you.

00:18:15.180 Good luck.

00:18:16.200 That's an interesting point, too, because I think a lot of people in organizations, you

00:18:20.140 know, it could be teachers or managers or CEOs, they spend a lot of time thinking about

00:18:25.180 how can I motivate other people?

00:18:27.480 How can I get people to want the same, the goals that I want?

00:18:30.960 And there's a lot of books and courses you can do.

00:18:33.620 So, but you were talking about, like, in the end, like, you can't control what someone

00:18:37.320 wants.

00:18:38.260 Like, if they don't want to do it, then they're not going to do it.

00:18:41.460 Well, right.

00:18:42.360 You can't make somebody be motivated.

00:18:44.980 That door, we say, is locked from the inside.

00:18:48.560 Now, having said that, I also think that there are frequently ways of motivating people that

00:18:56.100 you just haven't thought about.

00:18:57.360 Because we all want different things, and some people, say, want to swim fast, right?

00:19:03.320 And other people want to have friends, and other people want the coach to like them, and

00:19:09.380 other people love the travel involved.

00:19:11.820 And there are different elements of a sport or an activity of any sort that can appeal to

00:19:17.540 people.

00:19:17.880 And as a coach, or a teacher, or a mentor, a lot of your work is figuring out what fires

00:19:25.680 up this particular person.

00:19:28.140 What are they looking for?

00:19:30.360 And I think that frequently works well, but not always.

00:19:35.160 Again, sometimes they just don't want to be there, and that's fine.

00:19:38.520 Okay.

00:19:38.760 So, to excel at something, you have to want to excel at something.

00:19:42.840 You got to have a desire for it.

00:19:44.480 Yeah.

00:19:44.820 No, I think that's pretty clear.

00:19:46.660 Yeah, but where does this desire come from?

00:19:49.720 Is it innate, or is it something that you develop from your environment?

00:19:54.100 Have you figured that out?

00:19:55.460 Well, that's kind of a million-dollar question.

00:19:58.300 I think there are two parts to it.

00:20:00.000 I think there's the innate, and there's the developed.

00:20:02.360 So, innate, I've got a couple of local grandchildren here right now.

00:20:07.680 One's three, and one's eight months old, I guess.

00:20:10.960 And these two little boys, you can already see they have very different interests and

00:20:17.120 different skills.

00:20:18.060 And one of them is very adept with his fingers, you know, and the other one isn't.

00:20:22.500 And one's interested in music a lot, and the other one isn't real sure.

00:20:26.960 And, you know, there are a lot of innate differences between people.

00:20:30.300 There's no, I don't think there's any doubt about that.

00:20:32.520 And different innate abilities.

00:20:35.840 You know, if you're going to be a basketball player, it really does help to be tall.

00:20:39.900 But that said, the desire is kind of a mystery.

00:20:44.820 Now, maybe it's because you're good at something when you're young, and that's fulfilling.

00:20:49.740 Maybe, who knows?

00:20:51.220 I think it varies all over the place.

00:20:53.000 Although, again, I do think family and your immediate surroundings play a big role, because

00:21:01.100 they allow you to do things or don't.

00:21:03.740 Like I said, I grew up in kind of an academic, bookish sort of family.

00:21:09.960 And so, doing well in school was approved, right?

00:21:15.000 My parents thought that was a nice, I mean, they didn't care about my grades exactly, but

00:21:18.300 they thought it was good to study and learn things and so on.

00:21:20.760 And I had plenty of classmates who just didn't care about school.

00:21:26.140 And that's, again, that's fine, too.

00:21:28.340 But they're not likely to do well at it if their parents don't support it, you know?

00:21:34.380 And you need, in sports, you're a little kid, you need somebody to drive you to all those

00:21:39.260 practices and pay for them and live in a place where it's available.

00:21:45.240 I mean, swimming, swimming pools are expensive.

00:21:48.320 Yeah.

00:21:49.320 Right?

00:21:49.600 You've got to live in a neighborhood that's got, or a city or whatever, at least, that's

00:21:54.540 got good swimming pools and be close enough in whatever way you can get to the thing.

00:22:00.020 Yeah, I feel like a lot of desire is innate.

00:22:02.540 Because I've seen the same thing with my own kids that you see with your grandkids.

00:22:06.940 They got the same parents, but they've got very different personalities, different interests.

00:22:11.420 So I think it's important as a parent to expose them to different things so they can figure

00:22:17.300 out, so they can find the things that they have a unique interest in, you know, an intrinsic

00:22:21.980 motivation to pursue and become excellent at.

00:22:23.980 And then also, I think also it helps develop that desire.

00:22:28.060 Just putting yourself around people that have that desire too.

00:22:32.340 Yeah.

00:22:32.540 Like just being around friends.

00:22:33.580 I mean, I think that's what happens.

00:22:34.900 What I've noticed in my life is I see a friend doing something that they enjoy and they're

00:22:40.400 excelling at.

00:22:40.960 And I'm like, oh, I want to do that too.

00:22:43.300 It's the idea of mimetic desire.

00:22:45.280 You observe people and you want to be like them.

00:22:47.460 That's a good way to put it.

00:22:48.500 Yeah.

00:22:48.680 I'm curious in your study of Olympic athletes, did you encounter anyone who they were training

00:22:54.060 for the Olympics, but they didn't really want to, you know, maybe they'd fooled themselves

00:22:58.520 into thinking they wanted it, but they actually didn't want it.

00:23:01.400 Well, yes, I don't think it's that common, but there are certainly cases.

00:23:07.360 I mean, Andre Agassi in tennis was a famous case of this, that he didn't really like doing

00:23:11.980 it.

00:23:12.200 But what happens is if you grow up in an activity like that, which is what usually

00:23:18.340 happens if you're going to be top of the world level, you grow up in it and you've

00:23:24.840 got a lot of commitments, right?

00:23:26.720 Your friends are all there and your parents approve of it probably.

00:23:31.420 And you've moved very likely, you know, geographically to be in a place where you can do it.

00:23:38.320 And you've sunk a lot of costs into this thing.

00:23:42.200 And so, gosh, how can I quit now?

00:23:44.760 You know, that's hard to do.

00:23:46.680 This is the old thing about how people never drop out of Harvard.

00:23:51.100 Yeah.

00:23:52.480 And there's pretty good evidence that some of that is not that the students actually enjoy

00:23:57.600 being there so much, although obviously a lot of them do.

00:24:00.840 But, you know, by the time you've put in the effort to get there, you're like, oh my gosh,

00:24:06.920 you know, everybody be disappointed or people would think I'm crazy if I left or something

00:24:11.520 like that.

00:24:12.040 And so, they have a very high retention rate for a college.

00:24:16.040 People don't drop out.

00:24:17.740 And some chunk of that is, again, because people have made commitments.

00:24:22.480 So, the same thing certainly operates in sports is once you've spent, you know, 10 years trying

00:24:28.400 to become really good at something or 20, it's going to be hard to leave.

00:24:34.560 Yeah.

00:24:35.020 Even if you're not really interested in it anymore.

00:24:37.460 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:24:39.460 And now, back to the show.

00:24:43.960 So, you've been talking about this social world that elite level swimmers find themselves in.

00:24:50.100 So, they're around other swimmers who are also really good.

00:24:52.460 They enjoy being around them.

00:24:53.720 But also, in the book Champions, you talk about how the coach you follow, this guy named

00:24:57.960 Mark Schubert, he created a social world at Mission Viejo that reinforced this idea of

00:25:05.740 excellence.

00:25:06.100 What did Mark Schubert do differently from other coaches?

00:25:09.860 Well, he started out in Ohio, and he was very successful in a four-lane, 20-yard pool,

00:25:18.640 a very small pool, not much of a facility at all, and in a location that's not famous for

00:25:24.020 great swimming.

00:25:24.760 I mean, there are, I don't want to, okay, there are some great swimming teams in Ohio,

00:25:29.700 don't get me wrong, some great swimming teams.

00:25:32.020 But at the time and in the town he lived in, you know, there wasn't much there.

00:25:37.380 And he wanted to be a top coach.

00:25:39.460 So, he started out with goals.

00:25:42.220 He wanted to be a top-tier coach.

00:25:45.260 He wanted to have the best program in the country, is what he said.

00:25:48.560 And so, what he did is he moved to California.

00:25:53.720 He moved to Southern California, which was the mecca for top-notch swimming at that point.

00:25:59.680 And he took with him several of his most serious athletes that he had coached in high school so

00:26:07.460 that he would have a core of people right from the outside.

00:26:09.940 And he got out to California, and well, long story short, he pulled together a group of

00:26:16.180 top-notch athletes because what he did was, the way he put it, he built around the best.

00:26:22.180 Most teams are not really built around the best athletes.

00:26:26.720 They're built around the large group of athletes like that.

00:26:29.760 Well, most of our kids are like this, and that's who I've got to please and aim for and keep in the program and stuff.

00:26:36.140 And Schubert, he built around the top athletes.

00:26:40.060 He built a program that satisfied teenagers who wanted to win world championships.

00:26:49.480 And that's hard to do in various ways, but he was able to do it.

00:26:54.000 And he pulled together this group, and there was a commitment from the people who owned the pool that that's what they wanted to.

00:27:02.200 And you get together the people, and you can do it.

00:27:04.600 I imagine it can be hard to do because rebuilding a team or an organization around the best,

00:27:11.240 that requires excluding people, saying, no, you can't do it.

00:27:17.420 Right. That's a killer.

00:27:19.760 It turns out people love watching the Olympics and talk about, oh, I want to win a gold medal.

00:27:24.140 But it turns out in real life, there's some unpleasant things that go on getting there or difficult things.

00:27:34.100 And most people just don't want to do it.

00:27:36.260 Right. Or they think they want to do it, but then they really don't.

00:27:40.120 I think a lot of people, they like the idea of excellence, but they don't like doing the stuff that actually gets you to excellence.

00:27:46.700 Right. Exactly. Exactly.

00:27:49.680 Yeah. I mean, great writers, you know, a lot of people say, oh, I want to write a book.

00:27:54.340 You know, I'm going to write a book someday and so on.

00:27:56.960 But they don't want to actually do the writing, which is the hard part.

00:28:01.380 Right.

00:28:01.440 So that's what I mean by the mundanity of excellence, is if you want to be really good at something,

00:28:10.500 you've got to treat it like an ordinary part of life.

00:28:13.960 In a sense, you make it a job.

00:28:16.560 So, again, great writers, mostly, not everybody, but, you know, they get up in the morning and they work on their book for four hours.

00:28:23.800 And that's the first half of the day.

00:28:26.460 And that's got to be a routine.

00:28:29.760 It's got to be built in and just, it's just what you do.

00:28:32.780 It's who you are.

00:28:34.560 You can't just fiddle around with it and hope something great is going to happen.

00:28:38.440 Well, okay.

00:28:38.740 Continue this idea of the mundanity of excellence.

00:28:40.720 At the time, Mission Viejo, where Mark Schubert was coaching, it was the best in the world, spitting out Olympic champions.

00:28:47.180 And so you'd have coaches from all around the world come to Mission Viejo because they want to be like,

00:28:50.900 I want to come in and watch what this guy's doing and see what they're doing differently.

00:28:55.600 And maybe we can do, you know, implement their training and their programming.

00:29:00.800 And you said that all these coaches, they'd come, they'd be there for a few days and they would leave disappointed.

00:29:07.500 Why did they leave disappointed?

00:29:09.600 They'd get bored.

00:29:11.640 They'd get bored a lot of times.

00:29:14.580 Because I talked with Mark Schubert, the coach, about this at one point because some people had come and they come all the way from Hawaii, no less.

00:29:24.960 And they're going to watch these kids train and stuff.

00:29:28.380 And they got visibly bored.

00:29:31.120 I mean, you're just watching people go back and forth in a swimming pool.

00:29:34.120 After a while, it's not that exciting.

00:29:36.100 And Mark said, they think we have some secret, which really struck me.

00:29:41.860 And he was right.

00:29:42.920 People would come and visit and think there's something magical going on here.

00:29:46.720 There's something we can't understand or don't know about.

00:29:50.100 Or they're using some tricks or techniques we don't know.

00:29:54.020 And I used to go to coaching clinics all the time and take a lot of notes as big time coaches talk about what they did.

00:30:01.100 And I realized after a while, we know what they do.

00:30:05.400 Right?

00:30:05.940 There are books and lectures and so on you can go to and learn what you have to do.

00:30:11.860 The problem is most people don't do it.

00:30:14.100 And what those coaches didn't see is that the whole trick, the whole secret is there's no secret.

00:30:22.080 You just have to be willing to do the stuff that actually makes you, in that case, fast.

00:30:28.080 I'll give you one easy example is one day I was out there and for a week, all the team did was work on push-offs.

00:30:36.560 That is the way you push off a wall when you turn in swimming.

00:30:41.180 And I'm thinking, push-offs, really?

00:30:43.660 That's like, yeah, you know, you can gain a couple of tenths of a second or something.

00:30:49.820 But wow, and that's what they do.

00:30:53.000 And they worked on their push-offs.

00:30:54.420 And every time they hit a turn, they'd gain a couple of tenths of a second.

00:30:57.780 And, you know, it adds up fast.

00:31:00.000 And so it was the concentration, the detail, the relentless, consistent concentration on details.

00:31:06.540 And they're not just focusing on the details and doing more of it.

00:31:09.000 They're really intense with it.

00:31:10.300 They're going to make sure they get it perfect.

00:31:12.920 You do it exactly right.

00:31:14.820 And the coach, in part, what the coach does is enforce doing that every time all day, right?

00:31:22.420 You've got to not let your concentration lapse, in a sense.

00:31:27.460 And it's not that people are perfect at it or anything.

00:31:30.240 But enforcing, you know, proper technique all the time was a major part of it.

00:31:38.560 In talking about just like the small things making a difference and being, you know, fastidious about this, you talked about Rowdy Gaines.

00:31:45.480 Yeah.

00:31:45.620 One thing he did that gave him success at one meet was he would watch the guy shooting the firing, the starter, the starter pistol.

00:31:55.000 And every starter had a different timing, the way their body language let them know they're about to pull the trigger.

00:32:00.860 No one else was watching that.

00:32:02.320 But because Rowdy Gaines was, he knew when he could make the jump so he could get in before everyone else but still be legal.

00:32:11.140 Exactly.

00:32:12.000 Exactly.

00:32:12.620 Yeah.

00:32:12.780 And you've got to, that's a significant amount of effort, right, to pay attention to the different starters who are in a sport.

00:32:21.420 And people do this.

00:32:22.340 I mean, a lot of, he's not the only elite athlete who does this.

00:32:25.780 But he hit it exactly right with that start in the 100-meter freestyle in the Olympics.

00:32:33.220 You know, he knew this particular starter had a tendency to fire the gun fast.

00:32:37.740 And so he just took a chance and he rolled with the start and he won the race because of it, basically.

00:32:45.320 Something else you talk about is, and this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, you not only say that success or excellence is mundane, but that the motivation that leads to excellence is also mundane.

00:32:58.540 What do you mean by that?

00:32:59.620 How is motivation mundane?

00:33:02.140 I mean that the motivation doesn't have to be huge, okay?

00:33:06.580 Like to win an Olympic gold medal, in our example here, it's not like you have to have Olympic-size motivation.

00:33:14.480 You need to get up and go to practice in the morning.

00:33:17.020 You need to work hard on this thing or that thing.

00:33:20.120 You need daily interest, not just at the four-year span.

00:33:26.400 So you need to want to pay attention to what you're doing.

00:33:29.760 So a lot of that has to do with, again, the coaches and the people you're hanging around with, the people you're training with.

00:33:37.840 Having friends who are working on the same sorts of things, obviously, is big.

00:33:44.980 Motivation can work at a very small level.

00:33:47.980 I think of, well, okay.

00:33:51.200 So when I was a kid and I was swimming, there were different pools, right?

00:33:55.500 And I could name for you half a dozen different pools I swam in.

00:33:58.900 I trained in, I mean, with teams really working out.

00:34:02.360 And one of them in particular was kind of grungy and not well-kept.

00:34:07.700 And they had way too much chlorine in it, which was a problem in those days.

00:34:11.380 And it burned your eyes and it sort of smelled bad and there was a draft, you know.

00:34:16.180 I didn't want to go to practice because the pool was gross.

00:34:21.020 Whereas others, you know, I go out to Southern California and there are palm trees and beautiful sunset

00:34:28.720 and these gorgeous 50-meter Olympic-sized pool that was meticulously clean.

00:34:35.000 And, you know, you want to get in the water.

00:34:38.520 That's a mundane motivation.

00:34:40.480 That's what I mean.

00:34:42.000 And a lot of what coaches do is create those conditions.

00:34:46.100 So it's going to be pleasant, say, to be at the workout.

00:34:50.620 Or if it's not pleasant, that's for a real reason.

00:34:53.600 You know, they deliberately make certain things hard or something.

00:34:56.260 But that's a different situation.

00:34:58.820 So, yeah, find ways to make it enjoyable on a daily basis on the short term.

00:35:02.360 Absolutely.

00:35:03.280 Absolutely.

00:35:03.880 Oh, and if you're coaching children, you have to do this.

00:35:08.160 You're not going to, I mean, you can tell them,

00:35:10.120 wow, we could win the state championships.

00:35:11.960 And maybe that gets them pumped up for a day or two.

00:35:14.760 But really, they need the day-to-day situation to be good.

00:35:18.400 I once asked a group of kids I was coaching, this was early in my career.

00:35:23.000 They were talking about some teacher they liked in school.

00:35:26.700 And I said, what makes him a good teacher?

00:35:29.240 And they looked at each other and they said, he doesn't yell at us.

00:35:32.160 And I'm like, that's it, right?

00:35:36.780 It turned out a lot of teachers yell at kids. 0.56

00:35:39.540 A lot of coaches yell at kids.

00:35:41.800 And I thought, no, they don't like that.

00:35:44.600 So, stop yelling.

00:35:45.800 So, I stopped yelling and it worked.

00:35:50.240 It was better.

00:35:51.900 It's a little thing.

00:35:53.020 The little things, right.

00:35:54.320 And you also talk about, not only is it important to, you know, as you're training for success

00:35:59.960 or training or trying to achieve excellence, keep your motivation mundane, keep the things

00:36:04.260 that you do small and mundane.

00:36:06.160 But you also talk about, you have to maintain that mundanity, even as you become excellent.

00:36:12.480 What do you mean by that?

00:36:14.780 Well, that's just something I noticed with a lot of top performers is they would say things

00:36:20.480 before a competition, like before the Olympics, you know, well, it's another swim meet.

00:36:25.820 Now, they, don't get me wrong, they understand it's the Olympics and it's a big deal and a lot

00:36:30.340 of rides on it and so on.

00:36:31.640 But they would try to remind themselves that, hey, I've done this a million times.

00:36:36.680 I know what I'm doing.

00:36:38.600 I've practiced millions of times.

00:36:41.100 And just keep it ordinary in the sense of, I can do this.

00:36:46.780 You don't want to be blown away by the situation.

00:36:50.020 You know, there's an example I gave in the article, I think, was Abraham Lincoln, you

00:36:55.640 know, gave the Gettysburg Address.

00:36:57.260 And we now think, wow, that's a big deal and impressive and important and what a beautiful

00:37:01.660 speech and so on.

00:37:03.100 But at the time, he even said in the speech, the world will little note nor long remember

00:37:08.420 what we do here.

00:37:09.880 In other words, he treated it like it's a speech.

00:37:13.180 It's an ordinary thing.

00:37:15.000 I'm not freaking out over it or anything like that.

00:37:18.060 So you got to be able to keep things in perspective, I suppose, is the way to put it.

00:37:23.420 And again, top performers, they practice at a very high level of performance so that when

00:37:30.040 they get in a competition or a major performance or something, they can treat it as, here we

00:37:36.740 are and we're doing things and I'm doing this and yeah, I'm really good at it.

00:37:40.960 You talked about Schubert.

00:37:43.040 He'd actually relax more around the big meets, like right around the Olympics.

00:37:47.340 During the training season, he'd be really, you know, a stickler for things.

00:37:51.400 He was intense.

00:37:52.480 He was intense.

00:37:53.320 And then at the Olympics, he kind of let his hair down and he'd actually relax and make

00:37:56.740 jokes and have fun because he just thought, okay, well, we've done all we could, right?

00:38:00.840 So this is just another thing we're going to do.

00:38:02.900 Right, right.

00:38:03.800 Exactly.

00:38:04.340 And if you've done that preparation, you can do that.

00:38:06.940 And it's a big advantage because being uptight is not good for performance.

00:38:10.960 You don't want to be real nervous and self-conscious and stuff about what you're doing.

00:38:17.080 I'm trying to think there's a woman right now from Belgium, I think, who's a great 400

00:38:23.580 meter hurdler.

00:38:25.000 She's fabulous.

00:38:25.800 God, I just saw her the other day.

00:38:27.700 And 400 meter hurdles is a really hard event.

00:38:31.220 It's really physically quite painful.

00:38:35.120 And staying relaxed is a large part of the race.

00:38:38.280 And she is, she's beautiful.

00:38:39.940 She comes into the final stretch, final 100 meters, and she's just as relaxed.

00:38:44.400 Looks like, hey, another day at the park, you know, just running right along.

00:38:48.900 But keeping that, and the commentators talked about it, at being able to stay calm under pressure

00:38:55.780 and focus on your technique and you know what you're doing, that's a valuable, valuable skill.

00:39:02.400 And I just call that maintaining mundanity.

00:39:05.660 In other words, keeping it relatively ordinary, not like something you have to do superhuman

00:39:12.280 things.

00:39:13.260 Well, Daniel, this has been a great conversation.

00:39:15.180 Is there someplace people can go to learn more about what you do?

00:39:19.060 You know, Brett, I would say the easiest, believe it or not, is just Google me.

00:39:23.120 Okay.

00:39:23.340 Last name is Chambliss, C-H-A-M, and then bliss, like happiness, Chambliss, Dan Chambliss.

00:39:33.980 Or Hamilton College website, I think I've got a page on there.

00:39:38.960 I retired two years ago, so I don't know how up-to-date it is.

00:39:42.380 But yeah, no, you just, I like Google.

00:39:46.020 Okay, sounds good.

00:39:46.940 And I've written several books, and they're on different topics.

00:39:51.160 One's about hospitals, one's about higher education, but they really deal with a lot

00:39:55.580 of these same things.

00:39:57.040 Right, the small things matter.

00:39:58.520 Yeah, and the importance of being in a group that approves of what you're doing.

00:40:03.120 Yeah.

00:40:04.580 You know, the role of social support in performance, things like that.

00:40:08.960 And yes, paying attention to details.

00:40:11.700 Well, Daniel Chambliss, thanks for your time.

00:40:13.040 It's been a pleasure.

00:40:14.060 Thank you, Brett.

00:40:15.100 I've enjoyed it.

00:40:16.940 My guest today was Daniel Chambliss.

00:40:18.340 He's the author of several books, including the paper, The Mundanity of Excellence.

00:40:21.960 Check out our show notes at aom.is slash excellence.

00:40:24.340 We can find links to resources.

00:40:25.440 We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:40:34.040 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:40:36.920 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives,

00:40:40.980 as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

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00:40:44.660 And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review

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00:40:55.640 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:40:57.680 And until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:40:59.300 Remind you to not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:41:02.920 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - January 24, 2024

The Mundanity of Excellence

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