I was scrolling through my Instagram feed this morning and came to a reel of an extreme kayaker having fun in what I would say is a deluge.
In this video clip, you can see @danejacksonkayak in a small pink kayak in a deluge. It kept me wondering for a few minutes – how the heck did he do that?
This did not make me just go “hmmm…”; it made me go “WHOA!!!”
Would You?
Most of us would go “WHOA!!!” Most of us would not go into that deluge too!
Many of us would not even get into kayak too! Even in the calm water of Putrajaya Lake!
This guy, Dane Jackson, according to the handle on Instagram, however not only got into that small pink kayak but somehow got into that deluge (did he ask someone to push him off that cliff?), into violent water, had fun and had full control of that flipping (pun intended) kayak!
When my mind slowed down from a “WHOA!” to a “hmmm…” I started to wonder, “What’s going on in Dane’s mind?” Who is Dane Jackson?
This is what I got from the redbull.com page on Dane Jackson:
“Dane Jackson knows whitewater. The freestyle kayaker grew up traveling the USA in an RV with his family, getting homeschooled by his mother, and chasing kayaking competitions with his father, Eric Jackson, an Olympic paddler and founder of the company Jackson Kayaks.
Dominated
Dane dominated nearly every junior world title early on in his career and by 2011 he’d started winning pro-level contests, including the Whitewater Grand Prix and the IFC Freestyle World Championships, distinguishing himself as more than just his father’s son.”
Most people would read and realize that “oh, he’d been doing this with his father”, and “he’d been winning since 2011”.
What caught my eye was “Dane Jackson KNOWS whitewater”.
What really intrigued me was, how long did it take for Dane Jackson to “KNOW” whitewater? Would this correlate to what Malcolm Gladwell quoted in “Outliers” – 10,000 hours, which would equate to about ten years of practice and doing?
As I saw the video in 2022, and Jackson had been winning since 2011, it had already been eleven years. Assuming that he is really talented he still needed 2,000 to 5,000 hours of practice and doing to reach a certain level of mastery i.e. to the winning level, and he was born in 1993, he could have started kayaking when he was between ten to thirteen years old. He turned pro in 2010 according to the same website. When he was seventeen.
Fun and Mastery
A few things that “spoke to me”:
- He’s having fun!
- He had full control of the kayak!
- He f**king flipped it around!
- That deluge would kill most people!
And, though he could not control the deluge, he controlled three things:
- His decision to get into that deluge.
- His mastery of the kayak.
- Himself.
Perspective — Business World
Now, if you look at the business world, or if you are a business person, in business, most times the business world is just like that deluge. In my perspective at least.
In the forty years I had been selling or involved in business, even as small as a chicken seller under the ice cream man umbrella, the business had never been like the calm water in a lake. It had always been a river.
Just like if you want to enter a river, there are a few things or skills, that you need to master or at least learn before you can enter the river, safely and stay alive. Let alone thrive and have fun like Jackson.
