The First Marauder (#183)
I just finished reading a great post-apocalyptic novel, The First Marauder, by Luke Ryan. I’m not alone — it is currently rated 4.8/5.0 on GoodReads. The book follows the journey of Tyler Ballard, a 15-year old kid, as he navigates Florida four years after a weaponized small pox outbreak known as “The Red.” The author, Luke Ryan, was an enlisted Ranger in the 75th Ranger Regiment from 2010 to 2014. He did four deployments to Afghanistan. He now is the Social Media Manager for the Black Rifle Coffee Company.
Midway through the book, there is a passage that really resonated with me:
When they first met, Tyler thought that Miles was the master of all things, like some kind of ancient ninja or Spartan warrior. Now it occurred to him that everything that Miles knew and had practiced was basic — that all the decisions made in combat were basic, and that ninjas and Spartans probably knew that too. The trick wasn’t in the ability to master intricate skillsets, it was the ability to master countless simple tasks and to execute them in a matter of seconds. The difficulty wasn’t in the individual tasks, it was in the fact that one simple misstep in any of them could get someone killed.
Life isn’t much different from combat — there are a series of simple tasks that must be mastered and performed under pressure.
I’ve mentioned it before, but the quote got me to revisit Daniel Chambliss’s 1989 article “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification of Olympic Swimmers.” Chambliss spent five years examining swimmers at every level from novice to Olympian. He concludes that “Excellence is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then fitted together into a synthesized whole.” Chambliss could have just as easily said something like ‘Combat is mundane. Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then fitted together into a synthesized whole.’
There’s nothing ‘special’ about high performers. They just have a set of habits, practices and mindsets that individually aren’t particularly earth shattering, but when added together and compounded over a long period of time, result in the phenomenon of excellence. There is no secret — there is only the doing of all those little things, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit, an ordinary part of one’s everyday life. Tyler and Miles come to the realization in the swamps of Florida in The First Marauder as they drill, and drill some more, enter and clearing rooms, fire and movement, changing magazines, treating wounds, and breaking contact. It’s all very mundane for the Spartans, ninjas, swimmers, or survivors in post-apocalyptic Florida.
The challenging part is figuring out on your own or with the help of a coach how to break your big problem down into little parts. And then spending the time figuring out ways to enhance, optimize, drill, and habitualize elements of it to make the journey more manageable. You may also need to figure out things that you are currently doing that must be abandoned so you have the bandwidth to do the new things necessary to accomplish your goal.
Conclusion
Luke Ryan has written a great book, The First Marauder. Check it out. And then go on the offensive, master the simple tasks, and execute them well under pressure.
