Swimming State of Mind

Finding clarity in the water

I've been swimming since I was five years old. Not because I was particularly good at it—I definitely wasn't—but because something about moving through water has always quieted the noise in my head and lets me think clearly. When people ask about my hobbies, I tell them I swim. It's the thing that relaxes me most, and talking about how I think while swimming probably reveals more about who I am at a deep level than most conversations would. Swimming isn't just exercise for me—it's where I do my deepest thinking, where I finally connect dots I couldn't see before, where problems that felt stuck suddenly feel solvable. It's where my mind can either go completely blank or achieve a clarity I can't find anywhere else.

The Beginning: Structure Before Choice

In my childhood, I started swimming competitively at age 7. Every morning at 5 am, my alarm would go off. I'd stumble out of bed, bike to the pool in the dark, and jump into cold water. That first lap was always brutal—the shock of cold, the resistance of my sleepy body. But after eight laps of sprinting, I'd be warm, loose, and ready.

This was my routine through my teenage years. I competed, I trained, I showed up. My best events were the mid-distance races: 4x100 Medley and 400m free. Not the sprints where explosiveness matters most, not the ultra-distance where pure endurance wins. The middle distance—where you need both strategy and stamina, where you have to pace yourself but also push hard. Looking back, I see that preference as revealing. I've always been drawn to challenges that require both thinking and executing, planning and adapting. Not the quick wins, not the infinite marathons, but the sweet spot in between.

The Turning Point: When Obligation Became Love

At age 14, something shifted. My father sat me down and said I could quit swimming if I wanted to. I was free to stop.

And that's when I fell in love with it.

For years, I'd been swimming because I had to. Because my parents expected it. Because you don't quit things you've started. The moment it became a choice, everything changed. Suddenly, I wasn't showing up out of obligation—I was showing up because I wanted to be there.

This pattern has repeated throughout my life. Give me a rigid constraint, and I'll resist it. Give me freedom within structure, and I'll thrive. Tell me I must do something, and my brain rebels. Show me why it matters and let me choose, and I'm all in. I think this is why I'm drawn to frameworks and systems—not as cages, but as scaffolding that enables freedom. Swimming taught me that structure isn't the opposite of choice; it's what makes meaningful choice possible.

The Sea Swim: Thinking Through Uncertainty

At age 10, I swam my first two-mile sea swim and it was nothing like pool swimming. The race started on the beach. Everyone ran into the water together—chaos, splashing, elbows everywhere. I swallowed what felt like boatloads of salty sea water. There were no lanes to keep you straight. You couldn't see where you were going, so you had to lift your head every few strokes to check your heading. The waves were choppy—it felt more like moving side to side than forward.

The only navigation tool was a single building on the horizon. I had to keep looking up, finding that marker, adjusting my direction. Look up, sight, adjust. Swim. Look up, sight, adjust.

That sea swim taught me something about how I approach complex problems. In open water, you can't see where you are—you can only see where you're headed. You can't control the waves or the current. All you can do is find your marker, keep checking your heading, and adjust. I think this way now when I'm facing problems with no clear path. You don't need to see the whole route. You don't need perfect information. You just need a landmark and the discipline to keep checking your heading. The swimming does the rest—the rhythm, the motion, the repetition. Your mind works on the problem while your body moves through the water.

The State of Mind

Now, when I swim, I enter what I can only describe as a swimming state of mind. How I think shifts depending on which stroke I'm swimming.

Freestyle is where I go for thinking. Each stroke has a rhythm: index finger enters the water first, small curve, pull back, breathe to the right, six-beat kick, legs above water. The repetition creates a trance. Sometimes my mind goes completely black—true mental silence. Other times, problems I've been wrestling with for weeks start to untangle. Not always elegantly, not always completely, but enough to see a next step.

Some of my better ideas have shown up around lap 30—product strategies I'd been stuck on, ways to frame a difficult conversation, presentations that weren't clicking. I'm not saying swimming makes me smarter. I'm saying my brain works differently when I'm moving through water, and I've learned to trust that.

Breaststroke is different. It's pure relaxation. My mind goes blank in a softer way. It's restorative rather than productive. I'm not solving problems; I'm just... being. The glide between strokes creates these moments of suspension—brief pauses where I'm neither pushing forward nor pulling back, just floating. It's the closest I get to meditation without actually meditating.

Backstroke releases tension from my neck and shoulders. The deepest stretch happens when my arm enters the water, pinky finger first. I feel the pressure as I push past my pelvis, elbow bent. My focus narrows to just the mechanics: feet above water, smooth rotation, steady rhythm.

Different strokes, different mental states. Different outcomes.

Kindred Spirits

In doing a bit of reading, I realize I'm not alone in finding this happy place in swimming.

Bonnie Tsui writes beautifully in Psyche about swimming to think and stay afloat in an ever-wetter world—how swimming creates a rhythm that allows the mind to both focus and wander at the same time. Psychology Today explores why swimming is sublime, arguing that being suspended in water engages all your senses while reducing external noise, which is exactly why breakthrough thoughts arrive mid-stroke. And there's an honest reflection on Medium about the strange things swimming has taught—particularly the paradox of working hard while staying relaxed.

It's reassuring to know others have found what I've found: that there's something about the rhythm and the water that unlocks a different kind of thinking.

Why I'm Telling You This

Swimming reveals something about how my brain works. I need rhythms and rituals—the 5am wake-ups, the warm-up laps, the stroke mechanics—to create the container that lets my mind wander. Sitting at a desk, my thoughts spin in circles. But moving through water? Things become clear.

Swimming is where I stop trying to solve problems and just let my mind do its thing. The water holds me up. The rhythm quiets the noise. That's how I think best: in motion, in rhythm, with a clear horizon to aim for.