Stay In Your Lane: Life Lessons From a Former Swimmer
The sound of a buzzer can still make me jump.
Once upon a time, that sound signaled the start of a competition: against the clock, against myself.
When I was fourteen years old, I tried out for my high school’s swim team on a whim. As a freshman, I was pretty aimless, and I just needed something to occupy my time. I had no competitive swimming experience, but I figured it was worth a shot.
So I showed up to tryouts with a borrowed suit and cap in a plastic grocery bag and hoped for the best.
To my surprise, I made the team, but I got off to a rough start.
I was one of the slowest girls on the entire team. I was surrounded by girls who had been swimming for years, and I still remember lagging far behind them during my first practices, left in their wake as I struggled just to reach the wall before the next set of laps began.
I didn’t know what most of terms on the workout sheet meant. I didn’t know why the rules for relays differed from individual races. I didn’t know how a meet was scored, what times were considered “good,” or even how to properly dive in the pool (as pathetic as it sounds, I was honestly scared of water going up my nose — please, hold your laughter).
For the first few weeks of practice, I wondered why I even bothered.
When I saw how fast everyone else was compared to me, I just didn’t see the point of trying — how could I ever catch up? They had years of experience, and my spot must have been a fluke.
On the day of our first meet, I forgot to wear some team shirt that we were all supposed to have to show school spirit. I still remember my embarrassment, sitting on the bleachers in that white American Eagle sweater I had thrown on without even thinking and watching the other girls win their races.
But as I watched that first meet, something just snapped. My mindset shifted.
My fourteen-year-old self was a slacker, an underachiever, a typical lazy teenager who would do just enough to get by — until that moment.
Sitting on those bleachers, I decided that from that day on, I would work harder at swimming than anything else I had ever attempted.
It was a rare moment of sheer intrinsic motivation.
Fast forward to my senior year, and I was no longer the slowest girl on the team. Far from it: I was the top sprinter and the MVP.
What does some random high school athlete’s success story have to do with life after college?
Well, swimming literally forces you to stay in your lane.
And if you’re constantly looking over at what other people are doing, you’ll end up like this guy:
A good swimmer races the athlete in the next lane.
A great swimmer only races the clock.
After watching that very first meet, I stopped worrying about whoever was in the lane next to me and put all my energy into racing the clock instead.
Whatever your “clock” is, just focus on that.
For example, maybe you’re trying to build up an audience here on Medium: your “clock” is your follower count, your read ratios, your recommends, whatever. Don’t worry about how many followers everyone else has, just put in the work necessary to improve your own numbers.
If you occasionally glance over at the lane next to you because you need a little boost of motivation, that’s fine.
But you get a glance. That’s it.
The clock keeps ticking, and you can’t beat it if you’re just drifting along and envying someone else’s “time.”
When you’re a swimmer, every second counts.
And if you’re a sprinter like I was, every hundredth of a second counts.
That may not be the case for our day to day lives, but what about every hour?
I’ll be the first to confess that I can easily spend an hour scrolling through Instagram and feeling jealous of the creative writers who make a living there. Or looking at the freelance writers I follow on Twitter and wishing I had bylines in all the awesome publications that they do.
What if I had spent all those hours writing instead?
All that time looking over into someone else’s lane was totally wasted.
Here’s your challenge for this week.
Or hey, maybe this whole month if you really need some self-discipline.
Stay in your lane. Seriously. Every day, every hour.
Block out the distractions. Look to others only if they can inspire real motivation, not just negative comparisons. If you can’t stop scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, log out and delete the apps off your phone (I did this recently, my phone crashed a couple days later, and now it won’t let me download them again — a sign from the universe, I guess).
The clock is ticking, and it might feel like the pressure is on — but here’s the good news. Once you make a conscious decision to stay in your own lane, it’s like time slows down, but your progress speeds up.
You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you focus solely on your end goal — and before you know it, you’ll be breaking your own records.
