The problem with effort

The problem with effort is that as you progress towards the top levels of any given skill set, you have to work exponentially harder to see incremental improvements.

Imagine a novice guitar player. It takes him a month or two to learn a few open chords and soon he is strumming his way through a selection of campfire classics. This is enough for many people to label him a "guitarist." The next level of musicianship requires him to learn moveable chords, pentatonic scales, and a few hammer-ons well enough to work them seamlessly into songs. This requires a bit more effort. But within a year or so, 90% of people will nod their heads and say, "Hey, you're pretty good at guitar." To get to the next level, he has to learn some theory, to study major and minor scales and their relationship to chords, to spend hours with a metronome, and to integrate this knowledge so fully it becomes instinctual. It may take years. Yet to the untrained ear, it doesn't sound terribly different from what our imaginary guitarist was playing before. He soldiers on and spends a decade mastering sweep picking, tapping, and palm muting. But he finds these techniques are only usable for a few seconds of any given song, and most listeners don't recognize them anyway, lumping them all into the category of "Playing Guitar Real Fast." A virtuoso - Vai, Gilbert, Buckethead, Bumblefoot - has invested tens of thousands of hours developing skills so refined that only a tiny fraction of human beings can possibly appreciate them.

In P. H. Mullen Jr.'s Gold in the Water, swimmer Sergey Mariniuk is puzzled by the same phenomenon. He finds he only needs four hours of training every week to achieve speeds that guarantee him a slot on his country's Olympic team, but he'd need upwards of 20 hours of weekly training to knock another three seconds off his time. A 500% increase in effort to achieve an almost immeasurable increase in speed. He decides the added struggle is not worth it. After all, what's the difference between seventh and sixth place?

It's not that effort is bad. It's that it is most efficiently applied to learning new skills, not refining existing ones. This is the exact opposite of the way most of us lead our lives. We jump and sweat, trying to reach the next plateau, never realizing that amazing things are easily within our grasp if we're willing to walk in an entirely new direction.

[Ed. - I am not sure I agree with my own post here. But it is an idea that has been rattling around in my head for awhile and I enjoyed writing it. I think that I think that excellence has some intrinsic value. And while effort may not be efficient, it is still worthwhile.]

Welcome to my homepage. Now get going.

I can't think of a single personal or brand website that I visit on a regular basis. (Maybe The New York Times.) Instead I grab feeds that interest me (Like ColoradoPols, Noah Brier, Reach for the Wall, Selectism, Pitchfork and Sometimes Daily). I integrate interesting people into my news stream (Such as Alan Wolk, Barack Obama, Andrew Hyde, Universal Sports and Redhead Writing.) I subscribe to video channels on YouTube and look through my friend's photos on Facebook.

Like Jaffe said:

Today, consumers' digital homes are their Facebook profiles, their blogs, their custom-created communities. That's where they "live" in the digital world and that's where we need to hope they invite us to come and hang out from time to time, not the other way around.

My favorite personal websites right now are single-page designs that encourage visitors to connect on social platforms. Sites that are portals into larger stories. Sites that encourage you to leave them. (Such as Adelle Charles, Bud Caddell and Zach Klein.) My home page, Ingwalson.com, works the same way.

Brands could think of their websites as hubs, with links to content, connections and on- or off-site storefronts. Help people get where they're going. And don't bog down the pace of their lives.

Selling sport: Under Armour, the Colorado Rapids, the USATT, Arena and Nike

Before I was in advertising, I worked in gyms. Over the course of six years, I worked at the towel desk, at the front desk, in membership sales, and finally as a certified personal trainer. I have a special passion for athletic marketing. And a special frustration when it goes wrong.

Like Under Armor's audacious new line, "Under Armour is Football." I saw the flagship spot during a college football game, and when the game came back on, I couldn't help but notice that both the teams had Nike logos on their jerseys. Ouch.

Or the long-running Colorado Rapids tagline, "Experience The World's Game." Apparently the team hasn't noticed that Americans give absolutely zero weight to global opinion.

Or the United States Table Tennis Association's continued insistence that the best way to increase participation is to point out that table tennis is a game that anyone can play. So they put out publications featuring elderly and disabled athletes and then wonder why young, athletic men and women don't gravitate to the sport.

What do I like? A print ad for Arena swimsuits, which I first saw on the SCAQ blog and have reposted here. You want to be a monster in your next open water race? Wear an Arena suit. Simple. Insightful. Powerful. And so cool.

And at the risk of being obvious, I like Nike. From their relationship with Oregon football to the Live Strong line to Nike+, they have defined the meaning of athletics for two generations of Americans. They're a big brand that is still relevant to the cutting edge. And that's a pretty amazing thing to pull off.

Swimming is exactly like life

When you get in the pool, you sink. So you start beating your arms and legs around like crazy, inching forward and trying like hell not to drown.

The guy in the next lane is going much faster than you, so you assume that he's just a lot better at beating his arms and legs around than you are. But one day, you realize that he's not beating his arms and legs around at all. He's found a different way to play the game. A way to work with an element that should by all rights kill him. A way to stay balanced and graceful after fatigue and panic set in. A way to enter an alien environment and instantly become a native.

The day you realize these things may be the most important day of your life.