I have got this quote while reading the book “Grit” by Angela Duckworth. The quote goes as:

Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together produce excellence.

The quote is originally taken the from paper “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers” by Daniel F. Chambliss. The original paper can be found here.

The paper is an interesting and engaging read with the author conducting his study on swimmers across all levels (from country club to Olympic Gold medal winners). The paper deserves to be read and re-read, but for summarization purposes the key points of the paper are noted below:

  1. Success is not the results of:

    1.1 Having distinctly differentiated personalities

    1.2 Doing quantitative 1 changes in behavior

    1.3 Some specials inner quality of the athlete

  1. Excellence requires Qualitative Differentiation: The different dimensions of the differences can be:

    2.1 Technique

    2.2 Discipline

    2.3 Attitude

    Athletes move up to the top ranks through qualitative jumps; noticeable changes in techniques, discipline and attitude, accomplished usually by changes in settings, eg.joining a new team with a new coach, new friend’s etc, who work at a higher level.

  2. Success is Ordinary

    3.1 Excellence is mundane

    3.2 Motivation is mundane

    3.3 In the pursuit of excellence, maintaining mundanity is the key psychological challenge.

“People don’t know how ordinary success is” Mary T. Meagher (Winner of 3 Olympic Medals in Los Angeles Olympics). She then speaks of starting her career in a summer league country club team, of working her way to AAU meets, to faster and faster competitions; of learning new habits, meeting new challenges.

  1. Quantitative is related to increase in quantity ie, increasing the number of laps, increasing the total number of hours from 3 to 6 and so on. Qualitative increase is realed to the change in nature of the thing itself, ie. changing the technique of how an ideal breaststroke is done. ↩︎