Don’t work harder reduce friction

I find the best ideas don’t always come from the typical mainstream business books.  These are not lessons learned from any boardroom, or business, but from getting in the deep water with 800 of my closest rivals.  If you are drowning in work, and you believe the only choice is to move faster work harder, “put in more laps”, these ideas are for you.

It has been more than twenty years since my first brush with the terrors of the “Tri”.  I am still not a good swimmer but I no longer plow my way through either the water or the workday and I have a fellow failure to thank for the lessons.  Terry Laughlin was a championship swimmer.  He won all the trophies even coached winning teams until one day watching the soviet swimmers he realized he had failed to really learn how to swim.   More accurately he had learned how to swim the wrong way incredibly well.  He had been taught by like most swimmers of his era that the key to winning races was pool time. This is analogous to the believing that the key to office performance is desk time.  Neither is true.  We don’t get more accomplished merely by spending more time at the desk.  The secret to great performance on the job or in the pool is not putting in more time but in learning to create less friction.  Once Terry learned this lesson he reduced the number of

strokes required to reach the end of the pool from 24 to 14.  He was 40% more efficient.  What would you be willing to do to be 40% more efficient?  What would it be worth to be able to do everything you are dong right now with barely more than half the effort?

I thought it would be worth a hundred bucks and a Saturday morning so I signed up for a Total Immersion class at our local Y.  I was highly motivated, fully committed and ……..I hated every minute.   My frustration had nothing to do with the teacher, although I secretly wanted to dunk her repeatedly.  My problem was that, like with most changes you have to be willing to be worse before you can enjoy getting better.   That is a price most of us are unwilling to pay.  We would rather do the wrong things well than the right things poorly.

The more I learned about the Total Immersion concepts the less it had to do swimming and the more it has to do with life.

Applying these eight ideas to your life may not earn you trophies but you will spend a whole lot less time just stirring up the water.

1-Don’t try and do it all at once.  We have taken a long time to get the way we are.  Be willing to slow down and not worry about getting to the proverbial “end of the pool” but relearn from the beginning.

2-You are not alone.  Terry uses the first 70 pages not to tell you how to swim well, but to detail why we (and almost everybody else) have been doing it wrong all along.  Before we can learn something new we first have to be willing to let go of what we are comfortable doing already.  Practice doesn’t make perfect it only makes permanent.

3-Reduce Resistance.  Only 30% of our success in the water is because of power; the other 70% is by reducing resistance.  Think about the things that cause friction in your workplace or personal life.  Slow down and make it a priority create a common flow.  Use turbulence as an opportunity to resolve misunderstanding and build stronger relationships.  Southwest Airlines is committed to reducing turbulence from their planes to their people.  New team members are selected for their ability to work together.  Conflicts are used to identify those people who value flow more than fight.  Those committed to making waves are given the opportunity to go elsewhere.

4-Reach farther.  Don’t just grab on and pull for all you’re worth.  Reach for something bigger, more exciting.  Obstacles are all relative to the goal.  When the goals are big enough the obstacles are insignificant.

5-Find your balance.  In the water it’s about not kicking harder to raise your feet, but treating your body as a fulcrum.  By pressing one part down the other part automatically comes up.  When our life is out of balance, everything is a drag.  Take time to exercise, rest, play and renew yourself.  The demands of life don’t keep us out of balance, we keep us out of balance.  Nothing will change until we change.

6-Change your orientation.  I always thought you swam on your stomach, but we are most efficient when we swim on our sides.  In the pool this forces you to see the sides, in life it allows you to see what is going on around you.  We are only as alone as we choose to be.  Instead of staring at the bottom of your pool of work look around for those pulling in the same direction.

7-Pull from your core.  In swimming it is about not using arm strength but the rotation of your hips to power your stroke.  In life it is about finding your passion.  What is it that you never tire of doing that doesn’t require the effort of concentration but flows with fascination?

8-When you are tired, get out of the pool.  To continue to effort at the wrong things only makes us more proficient at the unimportant.  If you believe that life is a struggle, it will be.  In his book Bringing Out the Best in Others, Thomas Connellan, Ph.D. shared the story of Herman Hollerith who in 1890 invented the first census machine.  He estimated a skilled operator could process 550 cards per day and sure enough those he trained (who had an awareness of those estimates) processed approximately that many.  Another group unaware of Mr. Hollerith’s predictions went on to easily process more than 2,100.

If you feel like you are swimming upstream, it may be the current in your mind that is causing the most resistance.  If you want to reduce friction in either your swim or your life you must be willing to endure the awkward and relearn the process.

Be willing to consider that the problem you are having with (fill in the blank) may be you.

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