The Mundanity of Excellence

Mariama Tounkara Chambliss:The Mundanity of Excellence

In The Mundanity of Excellence, the author Danielle Chambliss recounts his experiences of with swimmers, and narrates how the experience exemplified, and defined the nature of excellence. He defines excellence as “consistent superiority of performance” and a concept that is not one-dimensional, but rather multifaceted. His main objectives were that “excellence is achieved via qualitative, not quantitative shifts in developing skills,” and that the phrase “natural talent” is a misconstrued idea because it obscures all other mundane things and factors that contribute to achieving excellence and success. To further elaborate his point, he offers the stratification of swimming as an example, stating that the only difference between Olympic-level and non-olympic swimmers is that the technique, discipline and attitude are different because they belong to qualitatively different but parallel “worlds”. He stresses and uses the word “kind” because ultimately, swimming is the same in every sense of the word, however it is the different kinds of things that you are doing that will bring about excellence, and not the number of times you do the same thing. Chambliss argues that excellence is mundane, meaning that all the ordinary, subtle little, subtle changes and habits that one adapts, such as changing diet, deciding to perfect turns, sleeping better, polishing their skills, etc; are what lead to excellence. In short, there is no secret formula to achieving excellence, but “the primary psychological barrier to achieving it is to get over the sheer mundanity of it.” All one has to do is make the right qualitative choice; and that starts with the small things.

Chambliss brought about concepts that I rarely thought of. Before reading this article, if someone asked me to define what talent is, I would have defined it as something that some people had and others didn't. He definitely challenged me to think about the...