Lessons from swimming from England to France

Getting hard things done – lessons from swimming from England to France one day. 

Ten years ago, today I swam the English Channel. A (not so) humble brag? Kind of, but something worth discussing too. As pictured, the swim took me 11 hours and 22 minutes (and twenty seconds to be precis).  I swam 44 km, making some 62,400 strokes. I become the 1474^th person to make a solo crossing. The 111^th Australian. 

That swim is more important to me today than it was 10 years ago. It changed the trajectory of my life and carried me through my toughest years that followed. Ten years on it occurs to me, the lessons I learnt preparing for that swim apply equally to business as it does to sport, and indeed life itself. Here’s some of what I learnt. 

1. Hard things are achieved incrementally. During the swim I stopped for about 60 seconds every 45 minutes to take some liquid sustenance. I didn’t have to swim to France that day, I just had to swim to the next feed in 45 minutes. 

2. High performance comes from daily practice. I trained for 2 years, not so I would get it right on the day, but so I couldn’t get it wrong. Some days were hard, some were a joy, but every day I had to do something, even if it was to rest and recover. 

3. Never make important decisions when you are down or distressed. My sports phycologist taught me that every time if I felt like I couldn’t go on, I was to make 100 more strokes before deciding to stop. By then, the had moment passed and I was good to go. 

4. Visualising success is enormously powerful. Every time I swam into the end of a pool set or on to the beach after an open water swim, I imagined I was hitting the French shoreline. When my time came, I expected to win. You need to develop an expectation of wining, a hope, a dream, a goal is not enough. 

5. You can’t do big things alone. You need a crew – a coach, mentor, training mates, mental and physical health professionals, managers, boat pilots, safety officials, and most importantly a cheer squad to support you when you are at your lowest and celebrate with you when you make it. 

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These lessons serve me well every day in my personal life, and in my work for Strata Managers who do one of the toughest jobs I have ever done. Strata managers have some hard things ahead of them. Professionalism will happen incrementally but only if managers take daily action to change the way they are perceived by the public.