Don't Follow The Herd

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that yesterday I did the first of a series of ocean swims which we've been training for this summer. It was a reasonably easy one, only 1.8KM, although we did hit some current and a pretty choppy section.

In all, just over 150 people took part, swimming from one beach to another. The kind of people who do this fall broadly into three categories:

1/ Serious (often professional) athletes

2/ Ordinary folk who are pretty good swimmers (that'll be me)

3/ People who aren't great swimmers, but just want to "have a go"

Even in group two, I'm nowhere near the fastest, although I'm not bad for my age group.

One of the hardest skills of ocean swims is "sighting" or actually seeing where you are going. Even a huge buoy is hard to spot from a kilometre away in a swell, and you'll often see swimmers stop in order to orientate themselves. I've been practicing "sighting" quite hard - waiting for the moment when you're on top of a wave, and looking up and ahead before taking a breath - and it paid dividends for me yesterday.

You definitely get a sheep mentality at these events and yesterday was a good example. One person heads off and gets it wrong, then a group follows, thinking they are being lead in the right direction and that they are saving themselves the effort of looking up all the time.

I entered the water and let the serious swimmers get going, then gently eased into my rhythm. By using my new skill I made straight for the first buoy and passed a small group on the turn. We then had a long run to the next buoy which was over a kilometre away. I could clearly see the buoy we were aiming at on the crest of each wave, but the large group I was in started to drift off to the right, following their "leader." It actually took some guts, as I was conscious that they were gradually moving out of my line of site and I was on my own. One of the support kayaks even followed me and asked if I was OK. About halfway along the straight I lost sight of them altogether, but ploughed on towards my objective.

As I got close to the buoy, I stole a glance back and right, and sure enough, the big group were all well behind me!

Up ahead were two lone swimmers who were just turning at the buoy and heading for the beach. And they made exactly the same mistake! Instead of turning tight, they performed a slow arc towards to beach, which meant I could cut inside them and get to the finish line ahead of them.

Essentially, by staying focused on my objective, I was able to beat a number of swimmers who were probably faster than me.

So how does all this relate to being an entrepreneur and a blogger?