Mental Pivot #65: Showing Up
Steven Bradbury and outlasting the competition, Neil Postman on technological change, and building a personal productivity stack.
If 90 percent of life is just showing up, the other 10 must be just standing up.
—Tim Keown (sportswriter)
Twenty years ago, Steven Bradbury became a national hero when he won Australia’s first-ever Winter Olympics gold medal at the games in Salt Lake City. His event: 1000 meter short track speed skating. His winning strategy: outlast the competition.
“The way I won gold was obviously very different than other athletes in other sports...[I’m] probably luckiest Olympic gold medalist in sporting history. It didn’t change the fact that I trained my guts out,” he said in a recent 20th anniversary retrospective.
In 2002, Bradbury was 28 and, by his account, the oldest competitor in the short track speed skating field. Bradbury had already overcome two serious injuries that had nearly ended his career (the most recent being a broken neck). By his own admission, Bradbury was past his prime in Salt Lake City.
Bradbury skated well in the opening heat, but then received a tough draw for his quarterfinal when he had to face host-nation favorite Apolo Ohno and Marc Gagnon (the defending world champion). Only the top two skaters would advance to the next round. Bradbury finished third and thought his Olympics were over, but then Gagnon was disqualified for obstructing an opponent which sent Bradbury to the next round.
In the semifinals, Bradbury faced daunting odds. He was up against defending Olympic champion Kim Dong-sung and two former world champions, China’s Li Jiajun and Canada’s Mattheiu Turcotte. Bradbury skated well behind his opponents for most of the race. But in the final turn, all three former champions crashed and Bradbury, who remained on his feet, was able to take first place and advance to the final.
In the final, Bradbury was the clear underdog. His competitors included South Korea’s Ahn Hyun-soo, Ohno, Turcotte, and Li Jiajun. Between them, this quartet had accumulated a combined 15 World Championship golds. It was a formidable group to race against.
Realizing he couldn’t keep up with his younger and faster rivals, Bradbury once again opted to hang back as his opponents darted out in front and jockeyed for position over the course of nine laps. It was a deliberate strategy on his part:
"I was the oldest bloke in the field and I knew that, skating four races back to back, I wasn't going to have any petrol left in the tank. So, there was no point in getting there and mixing it up because I was going to be in last place anyway. So, I figured I might as well stay out of the way and be in last place and hope that some people get tangled up."
For most of the race, Bradbury trailed several meters behind the other skaters, appearing to be a non-factor. But, once again, a surprising opportunity presented itself in the final moments of the race.
While jostling for position on the final turn, one of the skaters bumped another, which set off a chain reaction which sent all four skaters in front of Bradbury tumbling to the ice. Bradbury—still well off the pace and astonished by what was unfolding—steered clear of the carnage, remained upright, and glided across the finish line for the win.
“I’m not the fastest skater, but those were my tactics, and they worked like a charm,” he said after the race. It was the first Winter Olympic gold not only for Australia, but for any country from the Southern Hemisphere.
Bradbury later had this to say about his unlikely victory:
I’d like it if people are able to show their kids that race and say, ‘Little Johnny, Bradbury was incredibly lucky this night, the whole world fell over in front of him, but he trained his guts out for 14 years to put himself in that position and if you’re prepared to do that for something that might happen for you too.’
Sometimes it’s enough to outlast the competition and be the last person standing.
Note: Here’s a YouTube video showing the 1000-meter men’s final from 2002 if you want to rewatch the exciting finish and Bradbury’s improbable victory. It’s also worth noting that the phrase “do a bradbury” is slang in Australia. The Wiktionary definition: “To triumph unexpectedly in a sporting event, especially due to luck or the misfortune of others.”
Now onto this week's recommendations…
Thinking Tools:
Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change: 1998 speech given by Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death). The five ideas still hold up and are worth remembering. 1) Technological change is a trade-off (for each new advantage, there’s a corresponding disadvantage). 2) Technologies are not distributed evenly among the population; there are winners and losers. 3) Every technology has an underlying philosophy or prejudice. They are predisposed to certain action and outcomes. 4) Technological change is not additive, it’s ecological—it changes everything. 5) Media becomes mythic—enthusiasm can turn into idolatry.
How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack: Practical tips from Tiago Forte on methodically “layering” the proper tools and processes onto your personal productivity system. In particular, he advocates for a “personal dashboard” as a way to get “the big picture using your curated knowledge and data to guide action and help you make better decisions.”
How to Want Less: Long form excerpt from Arthur C. Brook's new book From Strength to Strength. It’s an examination of our acquisitive tendencies, the hedonic treadmill, and charting a better course for finding lasting satisfaction.
Putting Ideas into Words: Paul Graham extols the “severe test” of writing as a path to learning and understanding. “However much you learn from exploring ideas in other ways, you’ll still learn new things from writing about them.”
Reading Enrichment:
The Internet Turned Money into a Hobby: Rebecca Jennings explores the gamification of money and the blurred boundaries between investing and entertainment. “If Instagram made everyone a photographer and Twitter made everyone a writer, perhaps whatever the internet has done to the traditional banking system is in the process of turning us all into finance bros.”
The Misinformation Problem Seems Like Misinformation: Matthew Yglesias counters the conventional narrative on misinformation. It isn’t that we’re misinformed, it’s that we’re too well-informed: “If anything, things are getting harder because information has gotten better” and “people see the internet increasing polarization — more people are fighting about politics and saying things they think are really dumb — and confusing that with people being misinformed.”
The Moral Calculations of a Billionaire: Eli Saslow’s profile of billionaire Leon Cooperman and the moral obligations of the wealthy.
We Are Closer to Bradbury’s Dystopia than Orwell’s or Huxley’s: “In 1984, information is carefully controlled by the state. In Brave New World, citizens are bombarded with so much information they are unable to make intelligent judgements. In Fahrenheit 451, however, people choose ignorance as they come to reject the complexity and uncertainty provided by literature—with the proliferation of more exciting, short-form sources of media…”
Odds & Ends:
Digital Art Curator is an artificial intelligence project that uses machine vision to generate virtual art galleries. The project draws upon an artwork database of over 150,000 works from 90 different museums in Central Europe. Using common themes and visual motifs, the tool can be used to generate random with a unifying theme. Alternatively, users can curate exhibits by entering keywords and date constraints.
The Coffee Compass is an interactive tool that helps coffee enthusiasts troubleshoot and better calibrate their brews. Is your coffee tasting sour and under extracted? The recommended remedy is a finer grind and longer brew time.
Disney’s Animation Process offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what it takes to make an animated feature film. The site uses footage from Encanto, Frozen, Moana and other recent Disney films to walk the layperson through all aspects of the process from story development to voice casting to asset creation, lighting, post-production and more.
Cross-Promotions:
Refind is a content discovery tool that sends curated articles to your email inbox or via mobile app (iOS and Android). Focus your attention on what’s really relevant to you.
The Sample: A newsletter discovery tool. Based on your interests and feedback, The Sample sends a new newsletter recommendation to your inbox on a daily or weekly basis.
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