Slow Down and Locate Better - The 5-5-20 Principle

“People think I’m smart? You know what makes you smart? Locate your fastball down and away. That’s what makes you smart. You talk to Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, or Tom Seaver. They’ll all tell you the same thing. It’s not your arm that makes you a great pitcher. It’s that thing between both your ears that we call a brain.”  - MLB Hall of Famer, Greg Maddux.

How you’re thinking about things has a profound effect on the outcomes you’re going to get, especially when you’re faced with less than ideal circumstances. 

The more I work with high performers, the more I’m convinced the way we think often predicts where we’re going. 

Most of us are thinking poorly by default, the most successful people think about their circumstances in a way that uncovers what’s most important and then they orient everything around what actually moves the needle. The rest is simply noise. 

Greg Maddux was one of the most dominant pitchers in Major League Baseball from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. He was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award four consecutive years. Widely regarded as one of the most intelligent pitchers to ever play the game, “The Professor” became a master at simplifying what matters most.

“I could probably throw harder if I wanted, but why? When they’re in a jam, a lot of pitchers try to throw harder. Me, I try to locate better.”

Maddux learned what matters most for pitchers in producing successful outcomes, locating the baseball in spots that make it hard to hit. 

Have you deduced what matters most in getting you from where you are to where you want to be?

There’s so much noise in high performance. So much of the non-essential is getting sold to us as effective solutions to our greatest problems. We’re effectively being told to “throw harder”, when what we need to do is “slow down and locate better.” 

The 5-5-20 principle for raising your game.

There’s another lesson from professional baseball that may be worth your attention.

Major league starting pitchers like Greg Maddux would start 30 games in a given season if healthy. Maddux, like all the greats, learned what Sports Psychologist, Harvey Dorfman would often teach in that the 30 starts in a season typically have the same pattern.

5 starts out of the season - You’ll feel invincible. Everything clicks, everything flows, everything works great. These 5 starts, no matter what - you’re going to perform really well.

5 starts out of the season - You’re horrible. Nothing works, everything falls apart. You’re lost out on the mound, no breaks go your way, it’s all uphill.

What Maddux learned and any high performer who’s successful - The 5 starts that go well and the 5 starts that don’t go well will not make or break your season or career. 

The gap between Maddux and the bottom dweller isn’t the 10 starts on the extremes, but rather the 20 starts in the middle where you don’t have your best stuff. Low performers fall apart. Guys like Maddux find a way to work through and produce the best performance possible. 

5 starts you’re untouchable

5 starts you’ll have nothing.

20 games somewhere in the middle. Those twenty define your season. Those are the days when execution matters more than emotion. 

Locate Better > Throw Harder

We all have a tendency to romanticize our mountaintop days and catastrophize our days in the valley. But careers, marriages, businesses, leadership effectiveness is built on the middle days. 

Days when you slept just okay.

Days when you’re a touch distracted

Days when motivation is lagging. 

Days when you decide to execute on what actually moves the needle - even without your “best stuff.”

Greg Maddux was world class because of his talent, but he became a Hall of Famer because he mastered the ability to execute in his middle 20 starts per year. 

Leading under pressure this week?

Slow down and locate better.

Marriage problems?

Slow down and locate better.

Business stalled?

Slow down and locate better.

Team culture drifting?

Slow down and locate better. 

Given the “stuff” you’ve got. What would it look like to slow down and locate better today? Don’t just assume throwing harder will get you out of your jams. 

Stay The Course,