Little Things Count

I am including the whole of something I read.  The sentence, “excellence is mundane” really got my attention.
I felt it was something I have been harping on when I say, “lots of little makes a lot.”  So often what appears to be miraculous is a practiced art.  I think of the best kickers in the NRL.  After practice has finished, so often they stay back and kick from all sorts of odd angles.  The best golfers get into really difficult spots.  But so often they have practiced from spots like they are in.  So when they pull off what appears to be a miraculous shot - it’s a practiced shot.
Sometimes I think it would have been nice to know a lot of this stuff earlier.  But I always come back to, “it is better to know late, then not at all.”  Even in a world that has shrunk, excellence stands out.  Lots of little things done well, no matter how mundane, can lead to a big thing being done well.
This was what I read.  Sociology professor Daniel Chambliss, who spent years researching the qualities of elite swimmers, on what creates excellence:
​"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 are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.
When a swimmer learns a proper flip turn in the freestyle races, she will swim the race a bit faster; then a streamlined push off from the wall, with the arms squeezed together over the head, and a little faster; then how to place the hands in the water so no air is cupped in them; then how to lift them over the water; then how to lift weights to properly build strength, and how to eat the right foods, and to wear the best suits for racing, and on and on.
Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but each allows the athlete to swim a bit faster. And having learned and consistently practiced all of them together, and many more besides, the swimmer may compete in the Olympic Games... the little things really do count."
Source: The Mundanity of Excellence ​
He has my agreement big time. “The little things really do count.”