All athletes practice for endless hours and compete in several screening and qualifying events, then practice even harder for the big event, and then all of them run hard for the first 99% of the race. At the end of it all, the only guy who matters is the one who crosses that last yard a split second before everyone else does. The rest might as well not have bothered.
Almost everyone can do 99% of what it takes to win, it is the last 1% that is the hardest to do ... and hence the most rewarding. I call this the last yard effect.
You can this effect at work everywhere. Think about that last one kilo of tummy fat, that last millisecond of running time, those last 195 metres in a marathon (after running 42 km), that one really tough hole on a golf course or that one toughest question in a test that makes all the difference in our winner-takes-all world!
Of course, one still has to do the basic 99% to get to the final 1% in the first place, but the key question is: how to win the last yard?
Here are three thoughts:
- Choose the right "game": It is very rare to find people who are champions at more than one thing. Find the game that plays to your strengths and for which you have the passion. This may not be the most popular game, or the toughest or the sexiest or the most lucrative one, but that does not matter. If making burgers or drawing cartoons excites you more than physics, becoming the best in the world at it is much better than being one among many physicists toiling away at labs in NASA or CERN
- Practice, practice, practice: In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks of a "10,000-hour rule", referring to the threshold level of experience one needs for mastery at any task, be it playing golf, music or writing software. I buy it. Getting this much practice needs not only sustained passion, but also focus and discipline
- Take risk, innovate and differentiate: You cannot win the last yard by sticking to the safe, tried and tested approach or even by incrementally improving upon what others have done. You have to do something different, but something different that works better. Doing something different is risky, but here's where 10,000 hours of passionate practice help develop a strong base of expertise that increases the odds of success. Add some creative thinking to leverage that strong base and then be willing to bet the farm on it
winning the last yard is indeed difficult,as we know inlife nothin is easy as to your previous blog soft stuff is hard...theres no such thing as winning formula even einstin makes mistakes
ReplyDeleteAgree. Need to think of the above thoughts not so much as a formula, but as guiding principles. Also, I believe there is an element of chance / luck / destiny that lies outside of our control, no matter what we do!
ReplyDeleteI SHARE THE SAME FEELINGS FOR SINGAPORE,SQ,CHANGI. I AM ALSO A FREQUENT VISITOR AND I ALWAYS ENJOY IT THE WAY I DID IN THE FIRST VISIT.
ReplyDeleteWINNING THE LAST YARD IS TOUGH BUT THATS TRUE IF YOU DO THEN ONLY YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING.
i feel the toughtest thing is to find that game which is ones calling.social conditioning is so concerete that to open out and find ones passion is the first challenge.
ReplyDeleteIn your last phrase you said "the last 99 yards are not worth running unless you win the last yard....it made me think am I worhty of something?even if I wont turn out to be someone,how if I just depend on my luck,on my destiny....on my point of view I would rather say "the last 99 yards is worth running even if you wont win the last yard"
ReplyDeletegoing along with the run analogy. ask an olympic gold medal hopeful to choose between the two mutually exclusive options:
ReplyDeletea. run at your peak performace and more to win an olympic gold and find a place in history forever.
b. run some distance at a good pace to save a child from an oncoming truck.
except a socio/psycho path the others are likely to choose b.
we often confuse the run with the end. the question that looms large soon as we cross the 100 yards mark in life is, why were we running in the first place.
fact is the win does not matter but the reason why you ran does.
this game does not need people to win as much as it needs them to run in the right direction.
and nobody knows the direction we need to run in except ourselves. how big we make the run is entirely upto us. and i think there is no 100 yards mark on that.
Hi Puneet, thanks for the comment. The questions around "why run" and "how far to run" are indeed deeper issues that I did not aim to deal with here. the focus was more to point out that there is a thin sliver of difference between good and excellent, and that "last yard" is tough to do but makes all the difference
ReplyDelete