Today’s post was inspired by two things:

  1. A book I read 25 years ago Zen in the Art of Archery by German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel. The book’s main message is captured in this sentence: “A zen archer practices not to shoot bullseyes, but to achieve greater self-knowledge.” That was my first glimpse of a higher purpose for the swimming-improvement process TI had recently begun teaching.

2 An email from Liz Bippart, following our Open Water Camp at St. John USVI in early January. Liz read this post in which I explained that the starting point for improving performance in longer distance events is to know your time for a fairly short distance—100 yards or meters.

In reading surveys completed by those attending that open water camp, I was surprised that 75% reported that they had participated in a triathlon or open water swim, yet fewer than 50% knew their time for 100y/m. This struck me as backwards. In her email Liz asked what motivated ‘average’ swimmers to do the sort of rigorous measurement of their swimming that I detailed in describing the varied ways I time 100 yards—different stroke counts, different tempos, different levels of effort, and with more or fewer repeats.

So I’m devoting this post to exploring where intrinsic motivation to go beyond the routine comes from. It turns out to have surprising overlap with why zen archers practice.

Let’s start with examining the two categories into which all tasks or problem-solving exercises fall—algorithmic and heuristic.

Algorithmic tasks follow a set of standardized steps (i.e. an algorithm) to a predictable outcome or solution. A great example is the algorithm Total Immersion has created for learning highly efficient technique in any stroke. If you follow our proven skill-building sequence of BalanceàStreamlineàPropulsion, you can enjoy a high degree of confidence in becoming dramatically more efficient. Success at this and other algorithmic tasks is dependent on focus, patience and discipline. You cultivate these qualities in learning and integrating the sequence of mini-skills that lead to a high-efficiency stroke.

Heuristic tasks require you to experiment with a range of possibilities and come up with a novel solution. A great example of this is the shift in process that occurs when you work toward achieving a best time in a distance from 100 yards to 1500 meters or more. Total Immersion gets you started with an established step—swim in your Green Zone range of efficient stroke counts. But then you can pursue many possibilities involving elements such as distance, tempo, rest interval and effort level.

It’s inevitable that some of your experiments in combining these elements will produce less effective outcomes. But even ‘unsuccessful’ experiments can produce a valuable learning experience by improving your ability to evaluate different possibilities.

But the most important outcome isn’t the time or place you achieve through your training. Those who pursue only passing or extrinsic rewards may be tempted to seek shortcuts. In contrast, when your practice itself deepens self-knowledge, brings pleasure and satisfaction, and produces a feeling of using all your faculties a their highest level, it becomes unimaginable to seek shortcuts.

It’s typically an extrinsic goal—such as improving your time for 1500 meters, or gaining a higher place in a competition—that gets you started. But soon the sense of engagement and purpose you experience makes practice its own reward. While you have a satisfying sense of achievement from a best time or a ‘podium’ finish in your age group at an open water swim or triathlon, a few hours later the glow fades and a day or two later you return to the pool inspired by the possibility of experiencing the elevated state—sometimes called ‘Flow’– that occurs as you master the varied skills that produced that outcome.

I’ll outline those skills in my next post. Here I want to focus on the three ingredients to practice that produce a Flow state—Autonomy, the desire to be self-directed and in control of your own destiny; Mastery, the drive to keep improving at something that’s important to us; and Purpose, the sense that what we do produces something transcendent or meaningful beyond the immediate moment or goal.

Autonomy From our start in 1989, TI has worked mainly with late-starting, self-coached swimmers. It has been a point of pride for us that TI swimmers are equipped with the most advanced and essential knowledge and skills needed to coach themselves effectively. In the spirit of Kaizen, our process for transferring that knowledge to you has improved continuously—whether you learned from one of our Certified Coaches or through our downloadable Self-Coaching Courses. Algorithmic tasks provide a straighter and narrower path for developing that sense of Autonomy, or self-reliance. Heuristic tasks deepen it. Pursuing a better swim time—the smart and logical way we teach–is a great way to enhance the sense of Autonomy you began developing by learning TI technique.

Mastery Mastery begins with Flow–heightened experiences that occur when we tackle challenges that require us to stretch to the very limit of our current abilities. In a flow state, you can become so deeply engaged that your sense of time, place, and ego melt away. The difference between the two is time scale. Flow happens initially occurs in a moment. With practice it can stretch to most of an hour-long practice. In contrast, mastery develops over months, years, and decades.

Mastery follows three principles:

  1. Mastery is a mindset in which you view your abilities not as fixed or finite, but as infinitely improvable (Kaizen). You place a higher value on learning goals over performance goals and embrace difficulty and effort as a way to improve at something that matters.
  2. Mastery demands effort, grit, and deliberate practice. As enjoyable as flow is, the path to mastery is a challenging process over a long period of time.
  3. Mastery is a moving target: You never really feel you’ve achieved it. If a skill is infinitely improveable, how we can we ever say “That’s it. I’ve arrived. I’m now a Master.”

Purpose  The third ingredient is purpose, which provides a context for its two mates. Purpose creates a sense that you’re working for a cause greater and more enduring than the immediate goal or present moment. Like those zen archers who practice for greater self-knowledge, what’s your higher purpose?

In traditional swimming, you swim faster by working harder and stroking faster. In TI World, you recognize that swimming faster requires you to solve complex and deeply interesting problems. Such problems reward an inquiring mind and the willingness to experiment with many combinations of stroke count and tempo leading to an original, completely personal solution.

Later this month, I’ll provide examples and details on how to do this.