Flawless effort

The other day I heard a sportscaster say that an athlete’s performance was flawless. He said went on to say that the athlete gave, “flawless effort.”

Right away I cringed. Too often we focus on the end performance and ignore the steps leading to it. When the performance is magnificent, we see it as flawless. We assume it was his one-time effort that day that made the difference.

But if we strive to be flawless, we will significantly limit our ability to succeed. We need to have flaws. We need errors. We can learn from mistakes so we shouldn’t do everything possible to avoid them.

Sure, when we are competing the goal is to make minimal mistakes. But the process includes those mistakes so that we can learn how to correct them.

When we combine flawless with effort, we misconstrue the situation. That performance was the result of years of training. It involved mistakes and miscues. It required overcoming adversity. It meant the athlete had to power through errors to get better and better.

The outcome reflects their ability to perform at a high level. By this point it isn’t about giving flawless effort. It is about focus and relying on muscle memory. We build up our ability to perform. We keep improving. Then we use that knowledge, experience, and habit to perform at the highest level.

The other main issue I have with the term flawless effort, is that it misguides the newbie. Someone starting out sees that performance not as the outcome of the process, but as a one-time enactment.

This is bad because their goal isn’t to work through the mistakes to improve and get better. It is about trying to be perfect and avoiding mistakes. But mistakes are natural, and they are required to genuinely improve.

Effort is overrated. The best athletes use more perseverance than effort. Sure, they do the hard work necessary in the game. But they get to that point by working the process. By focusing on the process and then making sure they keep making progress, they will continue to solidify better technique. They will hone their mental abilities to make decisions in the heat of competition.

But sportscasters care more about the result. They are discussing this performance. They ignore what it took to get here. Therefore, they see a solid performance as one of intense effort. The training and process to get there is minimized. Instead, it was just about grit and the ability to focus.

In the middle of competition, we all need to have solid effort. But we need to realize that we can’t be afraid to make mistakes. That fear of making mistakes will hurt the training and therefore, will hurt the performance.

We should shift from focusing on perfection to making progress. We shift from relying solely on one-time effort, to rely on the persistence required to keep going. This will lead to improvement. This will lead to a greater performance. This will lead to a better athlete.