There is a cricket player who lives locally.
When I walk the dog to the small local dog park, often he turns up and spends some time in the batting cage area.
His process is fairly boring. He sets up 20 balls on little cones, about a meter from the wire fence. The balls sit maybe 8cm off of the ground, and are spaced about 20cm apart in a long line.
He then starts making his way down the line, hitting each ball into the fence.
The same exact shot. 20 times.
Then he repeats it about 5 times.
This is just his warmup. He then moves into other, fairly mundane but precise movements.
He is there on a Thursday mid morning. On a Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t seem to matter, he shows up.
And, relative to the other people who turn up to play a fast game, or to bowl as fast as they can, he is always doing something pretty boring.
This though, is where the magic happens. The repetition of the small tasks. Lower intensity, impeccable form, countless repetition.
To excel, we need to show up daily. Do the hard work of focusing on the basics. Tweaking, learning, improving.
Of course he also works on more complex situations and plays, but he is circling back around to dial in the basics.
I would bet a fair sum that in 5 years time, even though he has advanced immensely as a player, he’ll still be showing up to hit balls off of cones.
