Shortly after Canada found out it would be hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, several sports groups advocated government to obtain funding to drive podium performances at these games. As fun as hosting an Olympics may be, Canada had done so twice prior in 1976 and 1988 and as a host nation earned the dubious distinction of earning zero gold medals at home. The Own the Podium (or OTP) program was created by a collaboration of winter sports organizations to nip this embarrassing trend in the bud and produce podium performances in 2010.
The heart of the program was providing additional support primarily in the form of funding to athletes showing themselves on the path to performance. The goal was to help the best get better and become world class in time for a major event like the Olympics. The program produced results for Canada beginning already at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy where Canada won 24 medals and earned third place as a nation in overall medal count.
In 2010, though Canada didn’t achieve the stated goal of Own the Podium of being the number one medal winning nation at these Olympics, it did deliver the most gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics for a host nation. From zero in 1988 to the most by any nation in 2010 is solid support for Own the Podium. As an additional feather in her cap, Canada earned the most medals of any host nation since the USA earned more in 2002.
The point of high performance in any field is to own the podium (OTP). OTP is the place to be. This is the case in business, arts, and sports. For those of us that may not have the advantages of government programs waiting to propel our pursuits, how can we improve the odds of OTP?
Owning the Podium implies two additional OTPs. Become a One Trick Pony and stay On the Path.
To Own The Podium, you must become a One Trick Pony. There aren’t many jacks-of-all-trades at the top of many fields. The days of multi-sport professionals seem to have disappeared. Athletes like Bo Jackson don’t exist anymore. Scott Fitzgerald put it perfectly writing in The Great Gatsby, “Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.” Those that achieve brilliance aren’t balanced. As the British writer and politician Horace Walpole put it over 200 years ago, “The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly.” To be the one and only you need to become a one trick pony. Being a one trick pony is about specializing. It’s having a singular focus. It’s about becoming obsessive, tenacious, and persistent yet another OTP. Those aiming to own the podium are single-minded and goal-oriented like a dog with a bone.
In an online news article, Nicole James writes about World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen’s commitment to chess as illustrative of a one trick pony. She quotes Carlsen, “If you want to be great at something, you have to be obsessed with it. It has to come from within.” James writes, “This does not mean moderately interested or ‘I quite like it when I have the time.’ No. It means letting your chosen pursuit consume you like a hungry tax collector.” She continues, “Just be warned, if you’re not willing to bore everyone at dinner parties with endless talk of it, you’re not obsessed enough.”
In Win the Inside Game, Steve Magness observes, “The near obsession around their craft is a hallmark of high performers. They have this desire that borders on an addiction to improve, to get things right, to perfect their craft. It isn’t just normal motivation; it’s something beyond that, an almost manic-like intensity brought to drawing, reading, writing, piano, golf, or whatever the endeavor. The pursuit could be anything, but the intensity of concentration and persistence is consistent throughout.” Magness continues, “Regardless of the pursuit, these gifted individuals seem to have a trance-like ability to relentlessly focus on a task. They were obsessed with their craft. They were captured.” Long before they owned the podium, these one trick ponies were pulled or drawn to their calling.
Internet legend and fitness freak, David Goggins sums up the OTP mindset in his book, Never Finished. Goggins writes, “If you want to maximize minimal potential and become great in any field, you must embrace your savage side and become imbalanced, at least for a period of time. You’ll need to funnel every minute of every single day into the pursuit of that degree, that starting spot, that job, that edge. Your mind must never leave the cockpit. Sleep at the library or the office. Hoop long past sundown and fall asleep watching film of your next opponent. There are no days off, and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the baddest motherfucker ever at what you do.”
Our letter N of The Alphabet of Accomplishment included four “No’s.” The fourth No involved saying no to all the things that won’t take you closer to where you want to go. As Robin Sharma has suggested, clarity precedes mastery. The late legendary martial artist, Bruce Lee, put it similarly offering, “It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential… to obtain enlightenment means the extinction of everything which obscures the ‘real’ life.” In a documentary about the legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, Hawk offers, “I was singularly focused on skating and doing events because that was the only road to success. It probably affected my emotional connections because I couldn’t think of anything else. … I was just a machine.” Hawk himself realized that his success was the result of being a One Trick Pony and staying On The Path. One Trick Ponies seek to simplify by eliminating anything that doesn’t serve their sole focus.
One Trick Ponies stay On The Path. They do so by not taking on more, wider responsibilities, but by narrowing their focus ruthlessly on their singular objective. A consequence of the constricting focus is that you’ll not be current on the latest news and entertainment gossip. You’ve got to be willing to be like Epictetus’s observation, “If you wish to improve be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” One Trick Ponies are intentional about ignorance in some areas so that they can construct competence around their core objective.
One Trick Ponies stay On The Path. They decide and then they dedicate. One trick ponies acknowledge as Estee Lauder did in her biography Estee: A Success Story, “I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream.” The determined display their dedication as Jocelyn Glei details in Unsubscribe, “We make great things when we exert our unwavering attention over time on completing a single task. Value simply cannot be created in an instant, nor can it be created in tiny little five- to ten-minute bursts of focus in between checking your Twitter feed. Value emerges as the product of focused work that unfolds over time.” Owning the podium implies that we must specialize and then apply sustained efforts. By doing so we may experience what Ralph Waldo Emerson described as “The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. He becomes acquainted with the resistances, and with his own tools; increases his skill and strength and learns the favorable moments and favorable accidents.” The delight of dedication is found in consistently crafting competence as we noted in our book review of Pete Davis’s book, Dedicated. Sustained striving brings satisfaction.
“Specialization is about where you spend your time and effort. It’s how you stand out. It’s choosing to be great at one thing instead of okay at many,” writes Shane Parrish in The Great Mental Models v4. To succeed in any field we must first choose the game we want to join and then commit to getting better. Magness points out, “’Be obsessed or be average,’ advises entrepreneur Grant Cardone. ‘Toss plan B overboard,’ suggests Harvard Business School fellow Matt Higgins. Centuries before these men, military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, ‘When your army has crossed the border, you should burn your boats and bridges, in order to make it clear to everybody that you have no hankering after home.’ Going all-in is common advice for pushers of all kinds.” Owning the podium implies becoming both a one trick pony and staying on the path. To become legit, choose and commit. Those that want to win, believe in the idea being all-in. After all, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “Your heart has room for only one all-embracing devotion.”
