Athletes like Schubert were known to relax and have fun during big meets like the Olympics, relying on their preparation to perform well. Staying relaxed and maintaining a sense of calm under pressure is a valuable skill in sports, as seen in the example of a female athlete from Belgium who excels in the 400-meter hurdles. This ability to remain composed and focused on technique is referred to as maintaining mundanity, or keeping the performance relatively ordinary without the need for superhuman feats.
Forty years ago, now retired professor of sociology Daniel Chambliss performed a field study in which he observed an elite swim team to figure out what it was that led to excellence in any endeavor.
As Chambliss shared in a paper entitled “The Mundanity of Excellence,” the secret he discovered is that there really is no secret, and that success is more ordinary than mystical.
As mundane as the factors and qualities that lead to excellence really are, they can still run contrary to what we sometimes think makes for high achievement. Today on the show, I unpack the sometimes unexpected elements of excellence with Daniel. We discuss how desire is more important than discipline, the central role of one’s social group and surrounding yourself with the best of the best, the outsized importance of the small things, why you need to make being good your job, why motivation is mundane, and why you need to keep a sense of mundanity even as you become excellent.
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