On your marks

In the final of the men’s 100-meter dash at the 2008 Beijing Olympics the prohibitive favorite got off to a middling start, with most competitors managing to stay with him through the first half of the race. However by meter 50 Usain Bolt was starting to break free, and in the final stretch he pulled further away until at the finish he was almost two strides clear of the runner in second place—a huge gap in a track event at this level. While the seven other athletes gave everything they had, Bolt appeared to just accelerate away from them.

Or did he? Fans of track and field know that what looks like increasing speed in competitive sprints is actually an illusion. In Beijing, Bolt hit his top speed of 44 km/h (27 mph) around meter 60 but was actually about 4 km/h slower when he crossed the finish line. Yet by that point he was so far clear of the others that he had time to showboat, costing him a few hundredths of a second on what was still a new world record time.

In a 100-meter race runners are moving their fastest about halfway through, but everyone slows down towards the end; not even top athletes can maintain their pace. So what accounts for the growing gap between winners and the rest?

As it turns out, the best runners slow down less. Even though maintaining peak performance can’t be done for very long, they fight to lose as little as possible.

The track isn’t the only place where the principle applies. In the professional world all sorts of factors conspire to slow us down mid-race: changing family situations, multiplying tasks, health challenges. Yet some seem able to stay out in front for the long haul. These who maintain their performance aren’t usually growing more in absolute terms than someone just starting out; they just build on their early progress and fight to minimize erosion of these skills.

No matter which curve you're on, don't quit

This shows up in many places, perhaps nowhere more obviously than in relation to technology. There’s a reason why so much comedy is based on the befuddled elder wondering what a Google is, but between that extreme and the six-year-old making $11 million per year1 on YouTube lies a vast continuum, where continuous exploration and growth is possible.

Get set… and keep going

At least three factors conspire to slow you down, but there are specific tactics to minimize their impact:

  1. Responsibility: in theory, a great problem to have. As you rise in an organization or grow in overall authority it’s easy to focus on the tasks of leading, leaving much of the front-line work to others.2 While necessary, this delegation can sever the link to the actual work that gets done, making it harder for those at the top to understand what’s important and how it happens. Telling other people what to do is great, as long as you always have other people whom you can tell what to do. But as your understanding of the real work to be done evaporates so can your effectiveness. To address this circumvent rank and regularly upend the normal order of activities. If you work at an educational institution, when’s the last time you sat in on a class? If your job is keeping the books for a retail chain, when’s the last time you got behind a cash register?3
  2. Change: shocks to your environment, different competitors, innovative tools—all can seem inscrutable to those just a few years removed from the crest of the wave. What’s new is unknown, what’s unknown is uncomfortable, what’s uncomfortable leads to avoidance.4 The process is slow but cumulative, and it starts earlier than you think. The best way to mitigate this is to seek out a continual, low-grade level of unease with your environment, keeping the edge honed. Those who regularly incorporate new tools and approaches find themselves better able to stay abreast of the subtle shifts that form a constant backdrop to their work. If you’re completely comfortable with everything that life and work demands of you, chances are the inevitable change will be overwhelming.
  3. Age: it’s an unavoidable reality. Mental sharpness and plasticity declines for all of us, for some later than others, but there is a physical limit that all inevitably bump up against. This needn’t take you out of the running, but you will have to prepare. Slowing down less acknowledges the reality that yes, you will still slow down, with time catching up to everyone.5 Position yourself well when this happens by maintaining the learning and discipline that launched you on your path. Attempting to start a workout plan after twenty years of inactivity is altogether different from cutting a mile off your usual run because of sore knees. The first approach is a recipe for a trip to the orthopedist, while the second approach keeps you in the game. Similarly, your education doesn’t end forever when you receive a degree.

In the end, those who pull away from the pack might just slow down less. How are you maintaining your pace?

References

A Kinematics Analysis of Three Best 100 M Performances Ever, Journal of Human Kinetics

The Perfect 100, ESPN

  1. Or more accurately, this 6-year old’s very enterprising parents  ↩
  2. It’s a safe bet that the last time Donald Trump fired up a budget spreadsheet was, well, never. But that’s not a partisan observation – it’s doubtful that Barack Obama was running VLOOKUPs from the Resolute desk in the Oval Office either.  ↩
  3. And no, sticking on a wig while you slum it with the rank-and-file to drum up publicity on an episode of Undercover Boss doesn’t count. ↩
  4. Snapchat makes little sense to those over 30 and is incomprehensible to those over 40. I would never want to overlay my face with that of an animated raccoon spewing rainbows from its mouth, would I? The very thought is absurd, no? Millions of users, and a commensurate amount of venture capital provided by salivating Silicon Valley types, beg to differ.   ↩
  5. Even the great Usain Bolt knows when to hang up his track spikes, and move on to a career of massive endorsement contracts, plus a professional soccer career that’s not as quixotic as it sounds, all punctuated with his trademark lightning bolt pose. Very few top athletes maintain their careers into their late 30s, Tom Brady and his notoriously ascetic diet excepted.   ↩