With my daughter Hannah competing in her first swim meet as a member of the Omni Otters Swim Club, I volunteered as a timer for over 100 swimming heats for the Holiday Splash hosted by the Omni Otters at John Glenn Middle School.
Did you know? Swimming was first introduced at the Olympics in 1896
The first day I was paired up with Hannah as timers in lane 8 as she didn't have any events on the first day. We used a stop watch and "plunger" to provide backups to the touch pad system that tracked the results of the swimmers. I held the stopwatch and Hannah held the clip board and plunger. As each swimmer in our lane reached the end of their heat, we stood at the end of the pool and tracked when the swimmer hit the touch pad and captured the stopwatch time on the clip board.
The final step of each heat was to award each swimmer a ribbon who beat their personal best time. While there was a competition in each heat, Hannah was more focused on whether or not each swimmer beat their personal best, excited to see their progress over their previous time.
On day two Hannah had five events so I was paired up with another parent to keep time. I thankfully had a front row seat for two of the heats Hannah competed in my lane. This was Hannah's first swim meet so she didn't have a time to compare other than one freestyle time from practice.
As she climbed onto the block, I asked her what she was shooting for and she said she wanted to beat her practice time of 53 seconds. I cheered just a little bit louder than the volunteer timer should, but she was going fast and I shifted into proud dad mode!
She hit the touch pad and the time read 49 seconds!!! She beat her practice time by 4 seconds in a 50 yard swim which was a huge improvement! And by the way she finished 1st in her heat too!!! She also did well in the breast, back and butterfly stroke heats.
While I learned a ton about being a swim meet timer and Hannah learned from her first swim meet performance, the experience made me think about other applications in your career.
Is it better to focus on improving your skills and performance or pay attention to what the competition is doing to see how you compare? My initial thinking is that while you can learn from the competition, when you are first learning something you should focus on the fundamentals and improving your own performance. Over time as you achieve different levels of performance, the competition may be a source of motivation or learning but ultimately you shouldn't spend too much time thinking about them or your performance will suffer because you take your eye off you or your team's performance.
What do you think? Focus on your personal best or the competition?
Learn In The Flow Of Life
Jason
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