This week’s book learning is part 1 from a 3 part from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
When Michael Phelps’s alarm clock went off at 6:30 A.M. on the morning of August 13, 2008, he crawled out of bed in the Olympic Village in Beijing and fell right into his routine.
– 3h to go: He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and walked to breakfast. He had already won three gold medals earlier that week and had two races that day. Phelps’s first race—the 200-meter butterfly, his strongest event—was scheduled for ten o’clock.
– 2h 30m to go: He began his usual stretching regime, starting with his arms, then his back, then working down to his ankles, which were so flexible they could extend more than ninety degrees, farther than a ballerina’s en pointe.
– 1h 30m to go: He slipped into the pool and began his first warm-up lap. The workout took precisely forty-five minutes.
– 45 min to go: He exited the pool and started squeezing into his LZR Racer, a bodysuit so tight it required twenty minutes of tugging to put it on. Then he clamped headphones over his ears, cranked up the hip-hop mix he played before every race, and waited.
Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman focused his early training on habits that would make him the strongest mental swimmer in the pool and he did it with “the science of small wins.”
Small wins are exactly what they sound like. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. “Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage,” one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. “Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”
Michael Phelps cranking up his pre-race hip-hop mix (Img source)
When the race arrives, Phelps is more than halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.
Small wins are part 1 of the Phelps formula. Part 2 coming up next week..
Wish you a happy weekend and happy week!
A Learning a Day 
