Good morning and welcome to the Increaser Impact Podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 1,235. I am going to read

this story direct from the 6S6 on Sunday by Billy Oppenheimer. It's this recent post. He sends it every Sunday.

And listen to this. When Mary T. Meagher was 13 years old,

she clarified her goal to be one day breaking the 200-meter butterfly world record. And she made

two mundane changes of her routine. First, she decided she would never arrive late to a practice.

Second, she decided that during every practice, she would make every turn as if it were an Olympic race.

Where most swimmers allow themselves to swim more casually in practice than in competition, Megher didn't. This, she said, habituated

her to being a little bit better than those around her. On any given day, these two changes,

showing up on time and making every practice turn as if it were a competition turn would have

little to no noticeable impact.

We can imagine there were days where Meeker felt the frustration of putting in work that

doesn't immediately pay off. But over time, doing the kind of boring technical work that

few others bothered to do, she created a qualitative difference that

compounded into a glaring competitive edge in 1981 at the age of 17. Megherd had one of the

greatest performances in competitive swimming history at the U.S. swimming national championships.

She set the world records in both the 100 and 200 meter history at the U.S. swimming national championships. She set the world records

in both the 100 and 200 meter butterfly. At the 1984 Olympic Games in LA, still just 19, she took gold

in both the 100 meter and the 200 meter butterfly. She also swam the butterfly leg of the women's

4x1 heater 100 meter medley, earning a third gold medal.

In addition to her three Olympic golds, Megher won two gold medals at the World Championship and nine World Championship medals in total and was crowned U.S. champion 24 times.

She is widely regarded as the greatest female butterfly

specialist of all time, affectionately nicknamed Madame Butterfly. I am sorry, I probably

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