Open-water races and our professional development
Over my last open-water race (6.5km) in Cadaqués, I had plenty of time (1h 48m) to reflect on how close was swimming in an open-water race to my current professional growth.
In this post, I would love to cover different aspects and strategies followed in an open-water race which could be easily translated into our professional development.
Disclaimer: I’m currently Head of Data Platform at Typeform leading a cross-functional team composed of 5 Data Engineers, 3 Tracking Specialists, and 1 Data DevOps.
Disclaimer’’: My longest race has been 7km in 2h 4m.
Technical details
Prepare yourself
Before enrolling in any open-water race you really need to know the details. Distance, time, path, swimmers, weather conditions, etc. Each one of them will define the evolution of the race.
My first open-water race was 3km in Begur, it wasn’t easy but it was plenty of fun and, as a first experience, really meaningful. It was the right race to introduce myself to the open-water races so I could evaluate how much I would enjoy and how many more races I would like to run.
When we start our career in the professional world, we shouldn’t race into the senior or lead role as the first shoot, we should start from the intern/junior position and evaluate how much we enjoy the new job path.
In addition, we would need to do some research about the company we are going to join. Culture, industry, workers, teammates, etc. So we would build in advance some partial view about where we are going to swim.
Create awareness about your energy — build endurance
Swimming 7km requires endurance, requires being completely aware of your energy levels, so you take the right decisions over the race.
Going wild in the sea could end you up throwing the towel earlier than expected.
There will be moments when we will sail on conservative mode and others when we will be on turbo mode boosting our progress to jump into the next level (see: Jumping into the next swarm).
It will be just a matter of seconds or minutes, but before taking the next action, we will evaluate how much energy we still have on us and what output will be obtained from it.
When we are progressing in our job ladders, there will be moments to evaluate if we are ready to jump to the next level and what we expect from the change.
Nevertheless, there will be times where we weren’t planning to change anything, but even then, we will need to evaluate if our energy levels are the right ones to keep the velocity.
Plus, not everything is a matter of progress, sometimes we will experience contraction before expansion (see: Optimize energy).
Balance observation and focus
Open-water races are usually well signposted with big buoys (best case: 1 buoy every ~200m). So it’s easy to keep the right direction from the beginning to the end.
So, to visualize the next big buoy/achievement, you need to pull out your head from the water and look for them. This will impact your velocity since the right posture is to be looking down.
Lowering your head when you swim allows your neck to be in a more neutral position. This creates less fatigue and allows for more freedom of movement. It also puts less strain on the lower back and hips. If you look forward and have a high head position, your back will be arched when you swim, and your hips will ride low in the water. If you look down, your back and hips ride higher in the water with less effort.
So, how often will we need to raise our heads looking for the next big buoy? We will need to find the right balance (which could vary over the race). Having all the time the head outside the water would allow us to know for sure where the next buoy is, but, we would swim very badly.
Our daily job needs the same dynamic balance: how much time do we need to spend observing the market, the technological advances, competence, etc. versus how much time do we focus on our current work moving forward our team, our project, our company?
Mind the jellyfishes
The most feared monster by the swimmers (at least in the Mediterranean), are the jellyfishes and their stings. That’s why the most common question before starting the race is about them.
While swimming, it is ok to be aware that we will encounter some jellyfishes over the course. We will have three options: dodge (reduce velocity), just swim over them (high sting change), or use a suncream with jellyfish protection.
In addition, we shouldn’t put all the attention into them; otherwise, it will reduce our performance and our focus on what matters, enjoying the open waters and all the beauty underwater.
Jellyfishes could be the right metaphor to designate toxic employees. We will occasionally encounter them in our jobs, but we cannot allow them to degrade our performance and happiness at work.
We could dodge them, but eventually, we will run out of dodges. We could try to swim over them by having a high chance of impacting us and our team. However, we could try to work on solutions so we are ready to encounter them without reducing our speed and without impacting our team.
The sea current and the market
Over the race, we will encounter different current directions. Swimming with the current will bring us further with less time or energy consumption. However, encountering an opposite current will force us to spend more time and energy.
Being aware of the sea currents will give us the advantage of knowing when to reduce energy consumption to prepare for a jump or when to boost our speed to jump into the next swarm.
The market has the same currents, sometimes, the company and our team could take advantage of them by being in the right niche or because the tendency follows us. However, we will encounter complicated moments where the market goes against us (i.e Covid pandemic).
Optimize energy
Swimming behind someone usually allows us to reduce our consumption (10-20%) while we keep the same velocity. Even sometimes, we will touch their feet if we don’t put attention to their speed changes.
Optimizing energy could help us in three situations:
- We are preparing ourselves for the next swarm jump (see: Jumping into the next swarm), so we harvest energy.
- We’ve just jumped from the previous swarm and we are recovering from the extra energy consumed.
- We are already at our 100%, but swimming faster than we could do it alone, so we take advantage of our lead.
When working on different teams or companies we really need to acknowledge which situation we are in. Are we preparing for the next jump? Are we learning from a great team whereby giving our 100% we are capable of following them?
This could apply to interns, juniors, and mid-levels when having the right swarm allows them to keep the same velocity as Seniors (see: Leading a swarm).
The swarm
I consider a swarm as a group of swimmers swimming together at the same speed.
Shoaling with the swarm
Being in a swarm allows us to take the shoals advantages such as Optimizing Energy, reducing the number of times we look for the next buoy (+focus,-observation), and going in the right direction.
However, we could encounter some issues while shoaling. If the Swarm lead goes in the wrong direction, we will too. If the swarm reduces the velocity because is running out of energy, we will too. So we will need to take action: jump in to lead the swarm or jump into the next one.
Being in the right team will grant us too many benefits plus we will be able to learn, improve, progress, evolve over the journey. However, we will need to watch where we are in each situation and how the team/company evolves. There will be moments when our leading skills will be required, or when we will really consider the jump into another role/team/company (see: jumping into the next swarm).
Leading a swarm
Being in front of a swarm means that we are the ones at 100% of our energy consumption and the ones behind us are counting on us to bring them forward.
We will be looking for the next buoy more often than before, and we will not have the choice of resting behind anyone. However, if we have co-leads in our current swarm we could rely on them for some observation while we keep the focus, and in case of changing directions, they could correct us in time.
At work, I’m leading my swarm at full speed while being aware of how the entire company needs us and how our alignment impacts each area.
I’m close to having my first co-lead on board who I really believe in and who will help us in keeping the right direction while I can increase my focus time.
The team believes in the lead and they follow the same direction with him. If someone in the team stops believing in us, they could opt for: jumping out of the swarm, leading us, or the last option, touching our feet 👣 making us aware of their increased speed and needs.
Jumping into the next swarm
Over the race, there will be times when we are ready to jump into the next swarm. We have the energy required and we are eager to keep moving forward on the race. So we observe, we prepare, and then at the right moment, we increase our energy consumption to achieve the next swarm.
Jumping into the next swarm would bring us to swim with other swimmers which could have a different sense of orientation and different speeds than we were used to in the previous one.
We will localize the swarm lead and put ourselves just behind them since it will be the best position to recover from the energy jump while we adapt to the new swarm’s velocity.
It’s quite common and natural to experience jumps and changes in our professional development. We should evaluate before each jump if we are ready and what new colleagues and challenges we will find there. Jumping to the next adventure is not going to be easy and it will require being fully aware of who we are and where we are.
If we consume too much energy on the jump in an open-water race, we could end up not being able of following our new swarm and ending up swimming alone. Jumping into another role/team/company could have the same effect if we are not fully ready for it.
Acknowledge all swimmers
And last but not least, acknowledge all the swimmers. They are swimming the same race as we are. They are putting all their effort into it and all their passion. So we should respect them and acknowledge their skills.
Over the race, we will be sharing swarms, leaving some swimmers behind, and finding new ones. And we will acknowledge respect, and be grateful to each one of them.
At the moment I was crossing the goal, I was thinking that I’m not only ready to jump into the next swarm but I’m also ready to jump into the next swarm with my entire swarm.
