A Stroke of the Obvious

By Gail Richards - Aug 20 , 2008

While watching the Olympics over the past few weeks, I’ve been awestruck by many things, the most surprising of which had nothing to do with sports, really.Like millions of armchair spectators around the globe, our family was glued to the TV as Michael Phelps dove into the pool for the 100-meter butterfly and his attempt to tie Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals. In the last strokes of the race, viewers could not be sure whether it was Phelps or Serbian Milorad Cavic who had grabbed the gold. As the world now knows, Phelps prevailed by a mere one one-hundreth of a second!

Moments after he climbed out of the pool, dripping wet—still emotional from one of the most pivotal races, one of the most controversial moments of the Olympic games, and the crowning achievement of his life to that point—Phelps was corralled by ABC correspondent Andrea Kremer who, after years of professional sports reporting and interviews could only manage to come up with: “How did you do it?” A world away in our living room, even we cringed in embarrassment. How is one of the most accomplished and decorated athletes in history supposed to answer a question like that on the fly, following such an historic moment?

How did the reporter expect Phelps to respond? Recount his training regimen leading up to this monumental race? Go into detail about the physics of his final strokes? Wax philosophic about hard work and drive?

Turns out, we were being too hasty in our judgment. Phelps, without missing a beat delivered the perfect answer, “Well…I guess I just touched the side of the pool first…”

Talk about keeping your goal in mind and your eyes on the prize! That answer pretty much sums it up. If you are going to be the most revered swimmer on the planet, you will need to keep touching the side of the pool first.

How you do it—well, that’s up to you.

I think all of us need to stop hoping that we’ll have some stroke of genius or phenomenal luck that will get us to our goal. I think we just need to start paying attention to the “strokes of the obvious” that are right in front of us.

Many of you reading this will be familiar with my favorite book on writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. The title comes from a vignette in the book where the author’s brother, as a child, is faced with writing a school report about birds he had put off until the last minute. When it’s obvious he’s overwhelmed by the task at hand, Lamott’s father tells him to “take it bird by bird.”

Another stroke of the obvious.

As you travel through the journey that is your book, are you keeping your eye on the prize? Or are you easily distracted by quick fixes, easy answers, and gimmicky solutions to getting the work done?

There will always be another book you can read, another system you can implement, or another training you can invest in. But in the end, none of these will move you any closer to the finish line.

Let’s say you want to finish writing a first draft of your book by the end of this year. You can say that, and you can try to write when you can fit it in. You may even feel like you’re making it a priority because it’s been in the forefront of your thought.

But do you know how many words you need to produce each day to get you from where you are today to having a completed draft? Do you know how long it takes you to write that many words?

That will tell you how much time you will have to spend on writing between now and New Year’s Eve—which is roughly eighteen weeks from now (now being about two-thirds of the way through August). When you divide the amount of time you need to spend by eighteen weeks, how much writing will you be doing per week to stay on pace? Per day?

You’ve just figured out in black and white, with no bells and whistles, how you will get that book written. How’s that for a stroke of the obvious?