Misplaced Effort: Problem Solving with More Than One Strategy

For several years, I’d spend the warm weather months training in a semi-infamous Malibu backyard. The training was unconventional, albeit often with dumbbells underwater. The crowd was a bit notorious, as well, being chalk full of the who’s who of sport and entertainment. 

While in the sauna there, I remember having a mini epiphany as a bunch of NFL players were filing in for their first day trying the pool. As they came in I sort of anticipated (like most people who had trained there) that these physical specimens were about to suffer and it was going to be surprising to them. 

My thought as they walked in was that they likely have success and solve problems in the world of football with aggression, effort, and by attacking their challenges or opponents. Rightfully so.. 

In the pool, things are a bit inverted. The calmer you are, the more you can endure underwater.

Many of the tasks are about minimizing effort. 

For whatever reason, I’m comfortable in the water to a degree that is, I’d say, above whatever average is, so a lot of the pool training came intuitively. Most people get there and struggle, because they don’t have any experience with other strategies to deal with physical challenges. 

Juijitsu is another world where efforting isn’t all that helpful. For more people, effort and force is inversely correlated to success. In general, the best Brazilian jiu jitsu players exert much less energy than beginner players. 

All this is to say, look around your life (whether it’s the gym or not) and take note of your coping strategies and people solving methods. Are they aligned with the task? Or, are you placing your efforts in the wrong places?