Episode summary
A highway, a scorching sun, and an A/C that quits at the worst possible moment. Behind every effortless-looking result is someone who gave it 110 percent: no sweat on the outside, plenty on the inside.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. For those of you finding this podcast for the first time, I’m glad you’re here. I hope you choose to come back after this. For my returning listeners, it’s good to have you here with me again. Thank you for letting me be a part of your day.
Imagine this. You’re driving down a highway at 75 miles per hour. Clear skies. The sun is scorching you through the front windshield, but luckily the A/C is keeping the temperature inside the car nice and comfortable. You’ve been on the road for four hours, and you still have six more to go. Suddenly, you start to notice sweat dripping down the side of your face. That’s weird. Now it’s getting hotter. You check the vents and realize that for some unknown reason, there’s no more cool air coming through. After a few minutes you’re sweating buckets. You don’t want to wake the sleeping baby in the back, but the metal box of a car you’re sitting in is starting to reach oven-like temperatures. Rolling the windows down helps a little, but it comes with its own problems. It’s 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside, or 35 degrees Celsius, and you haven’t even reached the hottest part of the day. Could you make the rest of the drive without the A/C? I couldn’t.
Our road trip back from Indiana ran into some complications. Four hours at a mechanic and $1,000 later, we were back on the road with a brand new A/C. We even made it home before midnight. In the end, everything worked out well. We would have needed to replace the A/C anyway with the hot Texas summer just getting started. But for that hour or so that we were driving in the heat with no way to cool down, and then for the time we spent waiting at the mechanic’s, I was frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?
Before I get into today’s story, I have an expression I’d like to share with you. The expression is: give it 110 percent. Let me say that again: give it 110 percent. Now, mathematically, 110 percent doesn’t make sense. You can’t give more than everything you have, right? But in English, we use this expression to mean: give your absolute maximum effort. More than what’s expected. More than what’s comfortable. Everything you have, and then a little more. You might hear a coach say it before a big game, or a manager say it before an important meeting. Here’s a quick example: this meeting is really important, so let’s give it 110 percent. Keep that phrase in mind. It’s going to come up again before we’re done.
One of my favorite sports is tennis. I’ve been playing off and on since I was about nine years old. I played for the varsity team at my high school for all four years. I even coached tennis for a while when I was younger. I frequently watched the major tournaments and kept up with the professional rankings. The time I was most interested in watching professional tennis was during Rafael Nadal’s peak. However, even during that period of dominance, he was never my favorite player. That title belongs to Roger Federer. I remember watching videos of his groundstrokes and his serves, analyzing his technique to see how I could improve my own game. One word that was often used to describe his play was “effortless.”
A couple of years ago, Roger Federer gave the commencement speech at Dartmouth College, a very prestigious university in the US. A commencement speech, by the way, is the speech given at a graduation ceremony. In it, he talked about a few things I’d like to share with you today. The first is what he called the myth of effortlessness.
As I mentioned, Federer’s play on the court has often been described as effortless. I’ve been guilty of saying that myself. But the reality is that nothing about playing tennis at a professional level is effortless. In order to play that way in matches watched by millions of people, he had to give 110 percent in practices where nobody was watching. While it was truly remarkable to watch him do extraordinary things and make them look easy, it’s misleading to call what he does effortless.
I sometimes see something similar happen in language learning. Maybe you come across a YouTube video of someone who became fluent in English in eight months, and you think to yourself: how is that so easy for them? I’ve been studying for years and still can’t speak as well as they can. Well, I know from personal experience that there is no easy path to learning a language. The person who reached fluency in eight months was spending eight hours a day studying, and speaking with native speakers every single day from day one. We see the results and we’re amazed, but we don’t see the effort that went into getting there. It looks effortless. It isn’t.
The second thing Federer talked about in his speech was what he called “a point is just a point.” Over the course of his career, he won 80 percent of his matches, but only 54 percent of the individual points. Think about that for a second. One of the greatest tennis players who ever lived lost nearly half of all the points he ever played. In the moment, it’s important to focus on what you’re doing. You want to do your best. You want to succeed. You want to win. But when things don’t go your way, whether you make a mistake, you fail at something, or something bad happens through no fault of your own, you move on. Don’t dwell on the negativity or the failure. Focus your energy on the next thing.
When our A/C went out on the drive back to Texas, I was pretty focused on the negative. I was sweaty, uncomfortable, and not happy about spending a lot of money to fix the problem. And honestly, I don’t think there was anything I did wrong. Sometimes car parts just wear down. But once I knew what we needed to do to fix it, I had a choice. I could keep focusing on what went wrong and stay frustrated for the rest of the drive, or I could move on. It was just a point. Luckily, after a short period of brooding, I was able to shift my focus, and the rest of the drive turned out just fine.
Alright, let’s take a closer look at today’s expression: give it 110 percent.
As I mentioned in the warm-up, 110 percent is mathematically impossible. And that’s actually the point. When someone says give it 110 percent, they’re not talking about math. They’re talking about effort that goes beyond what’s normal or expected. It’s a way of saying: don’t just do your job. Do more than your job.
Now here’s something worth noticing. This expression is almost always used in a positive, encouraging way. A coach says it to motivate a team. A friend says it before your job interview. It’s about pushing yourself, not criticizing someone else.
And in the context of today’s episode, I think it applies in two directions. Roger Federer gave 110 percent in practice so that his matches could look effortless. And the language learner who reached fluency in eight months gave 110 percent every single day, even when nobody was watching. The results looked easy from the outside. But behind them? 110 percent, every time. No sweat on the outside. A lot of sweat on the inside.
So here’s your challenge before the next episode: think of one area of your life where you’ve been giving maybe 80 or 90 percent. What would it look like to give it 110 percent, even for just one week? It doesn’t have to be language learning. It just has to matter to you.
I think there’s something quietly reassuring about Federer’s numbers. One of the greatest tennis players who ever lived won only 54 percent of his points. More than almost anyone else in history, and still, nearly half the points didn’t go his way. The difference wasn’t that he never lost a point. The difference was what he did next.
I think that’s true for language learning too. And honestly, for most things worth doing.
What’s one area of your life right now where you could use a little more of that mindset? Where you could give 110 percent in practice, and let the matches take care of themselves?
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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